Grimes- Visions

Label: 4AD
Released: March 2012
Format: LP

Grimes latest offering, 'Visions' on big independent 4AD has been very well recieved in both the mainstream and the underground presses. It's not hard to understand why, the atmosphere is fantastically dark and subtly cinematic. The ghost of R&B is omnipresent, opener 'Infinite Love Without Fulfilment' with its rolling, creaking beat sounds like the last 10 years of chart music compressed into a black hole whilst 'Be a Body' has huge, slablike synth stabs that wouldn't sound out of place on a Rhianna record. Her voice floats delicately, high in the register but tightly anchored to the solid orchestration.

It's consistently strong throughout, 'Oblivion' has a particularly gorgeous vocal hook, and perhaps that's the key to her success; the skilful blending of avant garde elements with modern pop music in such a way that it doesn't at any point feel like a cop out or become too overwhelming. All her influences are handled softly,  and in such a way that they combine to create a uniquely gothic sound that is enormously addictive.

Francis Bebey- African Electronic Music 1975-1982

Label: Born Bad Records
Format: LP
Released: April 2012

Best known for his work as a writer, artist and musician this album brings together seven years of experimentation with African and electronic music that led to the creation of a unique and invigorating blend of the two. Bebey's highly distinctive voice is prevalent throughout, toasting in French and occasional English over a backdrop of ear poppingly vibrant tracks that draw from afrobeat, highlife and traditional music.

Album opener 'New Track' kicks in with sparse instrumentation, before a huge variety of textures and polyrhythms enter the mix. It's heady stuff, reflecting the phased repitions that composers like Steve Reich were experimenting with in the same era. The way Bebey delivers his vocals references chanson and their politicized content draws easy reference to Fela Kuti, but this is a different beast altogether- the aggression of afrobeat is not really present here although its framework is. Tracks like 'Tiers Monde' sound strikingly modern and 'The Coffee Cola Song' in particular is mind blowing. In terms of sheer exuberance there is little that can match this collection.

Symmetry- Themes For An Imaginary Film

Label: Italians Do It Better
Format: LP

Released: February 2012

Symmetry (aka Johnny Jewel) finally releases his long awaited 'Themes For An Imaginary Film', almost two hours of incredible synth music inspired by European noir films and the music of the American minimalists. The car is a major theme throughout the album, and there is a constant sense of propulsion, each track driving the music forward to its moving, sung conclusion. Originally tipped to create the score for the film 'Drive' this is not that soundtrack, although the artwork discretely nods to it.

The balance is near perfect, the dynamic between tension and release holds the record together. The peaks and troughs are regular, and the sounds continually renew themselves. Crystalline synthesizer lines solidify and shatter over chunky Italo beats, cymbals clatter menacingly and vintage keyboard sounds deliver the kind of ascending/descending dynamic you'll remember from Dario Argento and John Carpenter soundtracks. Melodic ideas are explored and discarded, basslines loom and dissipate.

There is a precision to this record that is difficult to describe, while it references the kind of synth soundtracks that you'll hear on a lot of films from the 1980s there is a lot more space, a razor sharpness to the editing that cuts out the decadent, noodling aspects of that era and introduces a stripped down aesthetic that drips with colour. 

Vatican Shadow- Kneel Before Religious Icons

Label: Type Recordings
Format: LP
Released: March 2012

Dominic Fernow (aka Prurient) releases a collection of tracks under his Vatican Shadow moniker that were previously unavailable on LP. Taking as its springboard the sinister iconography of the war on terror, 'Kneel Before Religious Icons' focuses on texture and repetition- building a hypnotic song cycle awash with hazy synth patterns and clipped samples that sounds like it was recorded in a bunker somewhere in the Afghan desert.

The sound is stark- scratchy, clicking machine drums and swelling FX pads that reach for climax and never quite attain it. There are some interestingly unconventional transitions in texture and pacing, first track 'Chopper crash marines' names released' has you locked in a suffocating, fuzzed out bubble before cutting the low end and seguing sharply into the shell shocked almost-techno of 'Harbingers of things to come'. 'Worshipers at the same mosque', quite possibly the album's highlight boots up with no introduction, snapping into a woozy synth led rhythm.

It's an album of gorgeous rattling darkness, that engages viscerally with its subject matter- cloaked in the black smoke of burning oil wells and the language of official press reports and televangelism it soundtracks effectively the defining conflict of this era.