Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 08/01/07
Label: Modular

n the same way that Simian failed to find any kind of audience as an indie band, before having their hobby dance spin-off Simian Mobile Disco become one of the hottest names to drop in '06, one half of Death From Above 1979 has mutated into a far more successful dance act. Jesse F, 50 per cent of the raucous post punk, heavy rock duo has gone on to form a dance group (pronounced Master Craft) with Toronto producer Al-P.

They share their love of minimalist Chicago house, Daft Punk, queasy acid house and handclaps with those other retro-futurists LCD Soundsystem. This is ironic as Death From Above had to add the date to their name after James Murphy, who also runs DFA records, threatened legal action. The duo declared a "rock'n'roll jihad" on the LCD star and stated: "If I had the resources, I would fly a plane into his skull." But they split up not long afterwards leaving just a couple of good singles such as "Romantic Rights" in their wake.

MSTRKRFT rose to prominence following an excellent string of remixes, including the incendiary reworking of Wolfmother's "Woman", with its stuttering Prefuse 73-style vocal work, which has been tearing up bleeding-edge dancefloors for the last few months. However, initial white label pressings of first single "Easy Love" proved they had some kind of mercurial skill for producing infectious and poppy house music themselves. Well, "The Looks" is, in brief, an undoubted success.

It is punchy, to the point and aimed squarely at the centre of the discotheque with GPS and laser sighting guidance. "Work On You" shows their ability to use the basic Roland equipment and vocoders to make a cheap and cheerful slice of the sort of handbag house that Cylon Raiders would relish. One of several high points here is "Easy Love", which still sounds fresh 12 months on and surpasses anything Daft Punk have done for years, despite being an obvious tribute. Meanwhile, second single "She's Good For Business", combines ESG vocalisations with a cheekily old school '80s electro pop backline.

Most really deep house heads will be horrified with the duo for not going beyond the factory settings on their synths and for using what appear to be cheap digital vocoders rather than the real thing, which is missing the point. Because "The Looks" throws up more sure-fire dance starters than anything Yahoo! has heard in a while. Indeed, the closing song is such a comic Mancunian-gangster-on-ecstasy-doing-the-box-making-dance style banger that it should be called "Have You 'Eard This Steve? It's a proppah TUNE innit?!" rather than "Neon Knights". Sorted.

    by John Doran