White Williams is pals with other whitest-boys-alive Dan Deacon and Girl Talk, his voice has intonations a bit like Beck and his parties are supercharged with that same fluoro green plastic at skull of Dan Deacons that glows a little at the peak of the pop hit. With keyboards soft enough and light lo-fi production I'm finding Smoke hard to not listen to, it's just upbeat enough but not as relentless as other purveyors of the kitschy dance. Elsewhere on Smoke are toned down but not washed out !!!-style retro funk bass along with strange retro computerry textures. The textures might just be my favourite part was it not for White Williams insistance to make us dance (or at least not yr head), well, for some of Smoke; 'New Violence' is by far the most upbeat track on the record but that's probably a good thing, preferring soft pop with a steady beat and a warm analogue flow.
Crystal Castles must be my most pleasant surprise of the year as all I had heard of them prior to actually hearing them was of their enourmous popularity as just-obscure-enough fashionably cool nerds with their casio blips and their Commodore 64 sounds and their dress sense and what not. It's nice to know they're pals with HEALTH (makers of one of the best self-titled albums of the year) Naturally I expected super-stylish angular guitars and a feigned disinterest in stuff but their new EP is anything but. Granted, their not the first band to utilize such 8-bit nostalgia but they're making it particularly funky, quirky and fun, just chaotic enough and just cute enough and just cool enough. But maybe I've just been playing too much SNES; Street Fighter!!!
1 comment:
You don't have a contact email on your page. Please take down the Crystal Castles track. I work at their indie label Lies. liesrecords AT gmail DOT com.
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