Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 18/04/06
Label: Independiente

In the futuristic and fantastic world of hip hop, producers are pioneers. Sorcering in the shadows, 'making' beats and ripping samples, they light the dynamite of sound for their swaggering charges to blow some explosive wordplay. In the more rigid and limited world of rock'n'roll, it's less certain what the role of the producer is. Making a great cup of tea, preventing the tapes getting burnt or band members from eating each other, this is an uncertain relationship.

However, there seems to be little confusion over the strident work of Paul Epworth across the last two years. As Epworth or his remix name Phones, Bloc Party, The Rakes, Plan B, The Futureheads and Tom Vek are amongst those to have been touched by his potent hand. Inadvertently positioning himself as the flick-switching figurehead for ragged, crunching neu post-punk, we currently await the release of his frighteningly promising liaison with The Rapture. In the meantime, here's the debut LP from The White Rose Movement.

Happily, "Kick" contains more fine Epworth production and surely the greatest single track he's worked on. Throughout the LP, the London five-piece, whose name is taken from a 1930s anti-Nazi group, fly their Spitfires daringly across the surface of an art-disco landscape scarred by the shrapnel of frequently harrowing '80s pop. Fortunately, their bleeding edge uber cool pout, convincingly realised undertones of dark menace and the super-right producer make this an LP of some considerable promise.

Debut single "Love Is A Number" was quite the most emphatic entrance for The White Rose Movement. This song alone justifies "Kick" and then some. Epworth at his barnstorming best, we find flamboyant singer Finn Vine wailing extravagantly about sex over production line percussive pistons in a belting remake of Joy Division's "Transmission". Second single, "Alsation" is not far behind, a bloodthirsty thrash of synth alarm bells, broken box beats and talk of infidels.

Moreover, from the first foreboding electro droplets of opener "Kick", through "Pig Heil Jam"'s terrific car crash of noise and the nagging, twisted torment of the hidden closing track, this sounds deep, dramatic, intense and exciting. Occasionally, the band's dalliances with the pop land that time forgot - sections of "Girls In The Back" and "Crueller" - teeter on the precipice of the '80s abyss. Equally, there's simply not enough killer songs here to snare you in the same way that, say, The Rakes did on their debut.

However, Epworth's vigorous production allied with The White Rose Movement's compelling manifesto frequently sees the spectre of The Human League, Gary Numan, OMD, Depeche Mode and New Order smashed in the future face to thrilling effect. The '80s has, of course, been in need of a good kicking for some time.

    by Ben Gilbert