You couldn't be more wrong- its brilliance lies in the fact it works from debased musical forms- Euro-pop, Mid 80s Fairlight Rock, Trance (listen to the arpeggiation on the title track... Jesus...) and yet takes that and does something unsettling with it... firstly by taking these forms more seriously than one would expect, and secondly by the incorporation of highly modern sound design in and around these derided sonic signifiers... (so hear the minimal version of a Phil Collins drum fill...) On first listen I deleted the entire album, I thought it was that bad. But over time I thought it might be worth a second listen, and indeed it is. I don't get any sense of Autechre circa incunabula with this record at all. Even the vocoder thing is taken to a ludicrous extreme (this is no mere Daft Punk or Kraftwerk retro-fetish) and the lyrics and detuned, genderless vocals work as a further layer of unsettling... (always playing with your expectations and tricking you into a sense of ease/unease at the inappropriate moment, like the way it often places quite angry feminist lyrics against the softest of musical backings, or the way that the most startling sonic events are frequently those re-contextualised mid 80s bits- that sound more daring than any of the minimal tech plip plop in the rest of the track). Sherburne DOES get things wrong sometimes, but not here, in fact the biggest mistake he's made all year is in lauding the Booka Shade record, which is cheesy and utterly utterly duff... filled with tracks pissing about, never epic enough or pop enough or trance enough (except in the most reductive and UN-EPIC block plastic cheese synth chord manner)
Oh and direct me towards the "fifths" comment, I can't find it... and anyway, using fifths is hardly a notable thing (in either a negative or positive way) surely?
well having listened to it two and a half times now (after mildly enjoying a couple of tracks on a first listening) i am yet to see this "greatness". so to start with the trance arpeggios: ok, they work well on the opening track, which is undoubtedly a promising beginning. however the riff in the following "neverland" falls flat. or rather, it sounds like the soundtrack to empty triumphant air-punching and is nowhere near strong enough to carry the track.
and i do NOT find this record "unsettling". having burned the album to cdr and listened to it in the car knowing absolutely nothing about the band (i got a second-hand recomendation, without having read sherburne's piece) it had every opportunity to do so, but actually only led to some generic confusion (and the fun game of spot-the-reference). and taking the reference points seriously and bringing them up to date with modern sound production is hardly original.
sherburne on the use of fifths? - here you go:
""Neverland" doubles Karin Dreijer Andersson's vocals across an unusually uncomfortable fifth; usually that interval should feel grounding, but here it leaves you on edge, as though uncertain as to which part of the harmony were the dominant element."
and i can't believe you didn't pick up on the
incunabula rip-off/reference alex: listen again to the intro to "marble house" (the vocal melody on that track, once it kicks in, is probably the most irritating on the album). in fact i found these "detuned, genderless vocals" the record's weakest point: to be unsettled by something you need to be drawn in, won over, and for me this never happened. a useful point of comparison is green gartside: as discussed at length on blissblog and k-punk, his vocals really ARE unsettling, because his voice is fascinating, unique, other-wordly....a further exmaple of unsettling vocals is of course scott walker....the point being again that his vocal performance is immediately arresting, and unforgettable....
all that being said, as sherburne puts it: "They certainly know their way around dance music's sonic vocabulary", and the textures are great. but they're not used as sophisticatedly as by villalobos, or luciano, or onur ozer, or any number of minimal producers, and neither are they enough to carry the whole album.