Sunken Foal – Fallen Arches

Sunken Foal
Fallen Arches
Planet Mu

Fallen Arches is the new album from Sunken Foal, aka Dublin producer Duncan Murphy from the duo Ambulance. The first time I heard Sunken Foal he was supporting Plaid, which is a pretty good indicator of the type of sound that he evokes when you first listen to him on this album. Unlike his work with Ambulance, this album sees him explore a more organic sound. Acoustic guitars and domineering pianos take the place of overpowering electronics.

Like Plaid, he weaves in some atonal melodies but he does it in such a way that it retains its warmth, something which can be lost with seemingly aimless sounds. Instead he adorns his tracks with oriental tones and echoing vocals making tracks like “A Bear in the Hermitage” sound like “Moonlight Sonata” played out as hollow twinkles on a music box. This album is for fans of the more acoustic side of electronic music. Sunken Foal shares his affinity for unusual instrumentation with artists like Colleen, while his take on the electronic side veers more towards the more expressive sound of Chris Clark. This is a good thing.

Gang Gang Dance – St. Dymphna

Gang Gang Dance
St. Dymphna
Warp Records

On this their fourth album (and first on Warp) NYC’s third finest experimental group Gang Gang Dance refine their phantasmagorial charm beyond that of their patchy back catalogue. Like Black Dice, GGD have sometimes existed more comfortably as an idea, or flattered to deceive. St. Dymphna stands out as their first concise and representative statement.
The album opens with an orgiastic double header in “Bebey” and “First Communion”, segued gloriously together with a decimated synth attack and highlighting one of GGD’s two areas of expertise: multi-instrumental frantic rhythm-smithery.

The quartet’s second trump card is its textural adroitness, as highlighted by St. Dymphna’s second movement. An intertwined mesh of vocals make up “Blue Nile”’s sonic pallette, with instruments I can’t claim to know the names of adding in brief moments of melody, while “Vacuum’”manages to be both an exercise in easy-listening music and actually memorable – a feat in itself.

Never one to pander to expectations, Dymphna’s next technicolour drop is “Princes”, a bizarro dub-rap turn with some trance-like arpeggios surrounding the familiar delayed vocal stylings of Lizzi Bougatsos. Delayed drum samples, glitchy electronics, computerized brass riffs and a very definite Warp attitude make up the middle section of the album, before finishing off on the slow groove and ethereally Kate Bush-like “House Jam”, and the Outhud-styled guitars and accomplished polyrhythm of “Desert Storm” and “Dust” .
As with their most common (though sonically incompatible) reference points, Black Dice and Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance thrive on indefinability. St. Dymphna, like the releases before it, is a conglomerate of the most diverse styles carried out with the least pretentious of intents. GGD have picked the wisest time to return, too: the wider indie-mainstream market has opened up to their sound, thanks to the diluted Kia Ora versions of the band’s freshly squeezed psychedelia courtesy of chorus-happy MGMT and Yeasayer. Unlike the contrived inclusion of world music influences in these crossover hit-merchants though, Gang Gang Dance’s stylistic experimentation translates more sincerely, making “First Communion” a guilt-free “Sunrise” to drop on the dancefloor. It’s finally time for one of NYC’s finest outfits to become more listened-to than name-dropped.

808s And Heartbreak review

Kanye West may not be the easiest artist in the world to endear yourself to, but you can’t deny that the man has talent. In his latest LP, Mr West has completely ditched rapping al-together, replacing it with beautiful melodies and AutoTune, a vocal-adjustment program that makes him sound like he’s channeling Cher.

The ‘808’ of the title is Roland’s TR-808 drum machine; a 1980s electro staple, and it comes to prominent effect in Kanye’s tribal rhythms on lead single Love Lockdown, and particularly the slow-but-powerful Say You Will.

The drum machine combined with lush analogue synths gives the entire album a warm, synth-pop feel, especially on tracks like Paranoid – without a doubt one of the strongest songs on the album, with an strong, incessant drum loop and gorgeous stabbing chords.

Certain die-hard fans will not be pleased with 808s and Heartbreak and Kanye’s radical change in direction. But for others, this will be a gladly-received slice of pop from one of the most talented producers around.

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