Throughout their career, James Ford and Jas Shaw have proved themselves to be nothing if not versatile. From the subtly swirling psychedelia of Simian, to the various dancefloor shapes they’ve thrown as Simian Mobile Disco.
Jon Hopkins navigates the territory between avant-garde electronic and beat-driven dance music with brilliance. There’s plenty here to make you want to get up and move, but as much to persuade you lie down and let the symphony of textures and timbres open you ears and take you on an inner adventure.
The death of “world music” is a wonderfully reassuring thing. That is to say, with every year that passes, it becomes less and less possible for media and consumers to bracket together music from outside the US and Europe as a single thing, and easier and easier for us to understand specific talents and currents within global culture for what they are. Obviously the fact I need to even say this means there's a good way to go. But talents like Baloji, the Congolese-born, Belgian-raised singer-songwriter, are blasting away the simplistic distinctions.
Although its opening minute suggests one of Can’s Ethnological Forgery Series tracks, Jungle? Quelle Jungle? quickly sets its stall with gentle whacka-whacka guitar, a Cerrone-type or South African-styled female chorale, fusion-jazz woodwind, shimmering electric piano, Latin percussion, squelchy bass and a touch of Space’s space disco. There is a lot going on.
Essentially, the album – its title a reference to Supertramp’s Crisis What Crisis – marries yacht rock and the smooth, Côte d'Azur side of disco. Fire Island, this is not. Instead, this could have packed the light-up dance-floor of Paris’ Chalet du Lac in 1976 or 1977.
Getting a handle on Jungle? Quelle Jungle? isn’t difficult but what perplexes is why such an album been fabricated. It sounds expensive and glossy, and is terrifically clever but lacks joy. Surely those behind it would have the nous to create something which hid its bricolage nature more successfully? Or to avoid edging into parody? And imbue it with a sense of fun? Apparently not.
Jungle? Quelle Jungle? has not come from nowhere. Ten years ago a French trio called Jordan released their only album, Oh No! We are Dominos. Produced by Jay Pellici, whose credits also include Avi Buffalo, Deerhoof and Sleater-Kinney, it employed Pixies-like stop-start songs, yelping vocals, odd bits of Afro guitar and parping keyboards. The lyrics were in English and it may as well have been by an American art-rock band. After that, the band faded from view but one-third of the line-up resurfaced in 2011 as the prime mover of electro-disco outfit Bon Voyage. Adrien Durand had made his next move.
Fast forward to 2017 when Durand claimed the producer credit for Amadou & Mariam’s last album, La Confusion. Now, a full album arrives under the imprimatur Bon Voyage Organization. Through-and-through, it is Durand’s project. Jungle? Quelle Jungle? is also an efficient, if deliberate and soulless, construct.
Overleaf: watch the video for “Goma” from Bon Voyage Organization’s Jungle? Quelle Jungle?
A little over two years ago, The Arts Desk reviewed Hipnotik Tradisi, Black Merlin’s extraordinary first offering for Island of the Gods’ Island Explorer series. The idea is simple. Take an artist, invite them to Bali, let them soak up (and, crucially, record) the sounds, and see what happens when they process the results in a studio setting. As a business model for commercial growth, it’s unlikely to win The Apprentice, but as a clarion call to auteurs, it’s almost irresistible.
There's something oddly innocent, gauche even, about the US-based Anglo-Finnish trance trio Above & Beyond. They are almost implausibly huge – their weekly radio show, called "Group Therapy" after their 2011 second album, has some 25 million listeners, and polls consistently rank them among the most popular DJs in the world.
On paper Django Django seem a perfect band. The four-piece, half Scottish, quarter English, quarter Northern Irish, boast an indie songwriting sensibility, but filtered through a natural pop suss, an engaging sense of psychedelia, a desire to rave it up, and a ripe capacity for harmonisation. Their third album is fat with melody and interest, right from its ballistic opening title track, yet in the end, why is it eminently likeable rather than loveable?
See, I keep trying to have a love affair with Django Django’s music. Their last album, Born Under Saturn (2015), sounds luscious but in the end the only tune I kept returning to is the peerless “First Light”. Their new one, their third, is gorgeous too, imaginatively constructed and may yet grow into something that makes me regret the angle I write from here (the constant bane of anyone assessing new music), but at present it seems admirable, not adorable.
Never mind such negative quibbles, though, and instead revel in what Marble Skies has to offer; the quirky Talking Heads-ish pop of closing slowie “Fountains”, the four-to-the-floor alt-electro-pop bouncers “In Your Beat” and “Real Gone”, the Afro-skittering, tune-rich “Surface to Air”, featuring guest vocalist Rebecca Taylor, the drum tattoo-led “Further”, which sounds like the Beach Boys having a techno-tribal moment.
Indeed, Brian Wilson’s oeuvre is rarely too far away, notably on the piano-led “Sundials” which, crudely assessed, once it gets going, is Wilson jumping in the sack with The Go! Team, albeit not in with the latter band’s penchant for deliberate cacophony. Django Django keep their palette full, Polyfilla-ing every sonic crack, maximising use of the multitrack, never slack in keeping things compelling. So there’s plenty to enjoy here. Yet somehow I was expecting more. What more was I expecting? Bloody music journalists, eh.
Overleaf: Watch the video for Django Django "In Your Beat"
“The Prodigal Son of Magnesia” is an attention-grabbing title. So are “Three Legged Giant Centipede” and “Public Execution of the Sleeping Lotus Eater”. Each suggests that the album from which they are drawn could be a prog rock epic inspired by conflating existing myths with newly made-up fancies. Track lengths exceeding 10 minutes further the impression. Yet despite surface impressions, 1 is not a showcase for instrumental prowess or tricky arrangements.
At three decades deep in the creative industries, it's fair to say Trevor Jackson is a renaissance man. He is a designer, filmmaker, music producer, radio and club DJ, compilation curator, label owner (he introduced Four Tet and LCD Soundsystem among others to UK audiences), professional grouch – and impossibly prolific in all those spheres.
Disc of the Day reviews new albums, week in, week out, all year. Below are the albums to which our writers awarded five stars. Click on any one of them to find out why.
SIMPLY THE BEST: THEARTSDESK'S FIVE-STAR REVIEWS OF 2017
Alan Broadbent: Developing Story ★★★★★ The pianist's orchestral magnum opus is packed with extraordinary things