REVIEW: Disco Inferno, D.I. Go Pop, (Bar None / Rough Trade)
- David Landgren
The first question you ask yourself is "What does a Disco Inferno sound like?" And the second, "What does it sound like now that it has gone pop"? The short answer, to both, is, amazing. The sound is experimental and rough, consisting mainly of swooping bass, screeching samples held in tight loops and spoken word. The guitar and samplers fight to impose their ascendancy over the other, resulting in a corrosive and enthralling sound. It's difficult to find another band remotely like Disco Inferno, I would say that this band is the aural equivalent of a Nam June Paik video artwork. You know Paik - the man who stuck aquariums in TVs, built up wall-to-wall towers of TV and led the way in the use of computer-generated imagery, played back on monitors, as art. Anyhow, this is Disco Inferno's second album; their first, Open Doors, Closed Windows, was a low-key introspective piece which was well received by the critics.
The first track,"In Sharky Water", is pushed along by a watery- sounding sample, a bassline that comes out of The Cure's Faith era, and a driving, strummed guitar a la Joy Division with a really weird rhythmic drumbeat which is guaranteed to catch your attention. Interestingly enough, this is the only track that features any conventional percussion.
The next three songs, "New Clothes For The New World", "Starbound" and "A Crash At Every Speed" continue the exploration of this post-drumkit world they live in. A rich, frenetic wall of samples provide the rhythm and melody, and the bass trails behind, which, rather than trying to play catch up, rumbles along on its own course. Proof that there is order in chaos.
"Even The Sea Sides Against Us" is the pivot around which the album revolves. The frantic pace eases up, the tone become desolate and melancholic. On "Next Year", for the first time, it is the bass guitar that provides the framework and the samples fall naturally into place.
It keeps getting better. "A Whole Wide World Ahead" is simply brilliant, a track that sums up effortlessly what the band are setting out to prove. The album closes, all too quickly, some 28 minutes later, with "Footprints In The Snow"; an ebbing, doleful piano.
This is altogether a brilliantly executed album, a lonely outpost on the darker reaches of rock'n'roll. Once again, this shows just how innovative the English can be when in comes to rock music. This deserves to be in the collection of anyone who prides themself on owning a diverse and well-rounded range of music. I give it an eight out of ten.
