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Album Review
by SashaS
3-12-2002
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| Ladytron's 'Light&Magic' trip into sound |
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Ladytron: 'Light&Magic'
(Telstar/Invicta Hi-Fi)
Ladytron are sleepwalking on stratocumuli
Global shelling by all kinds of cack vying for our attention is never-ending and we stymie its polluting our finely-honed taste, for the best part. Robbie, Gareth, Will are on ‘no-way’ list, even Coldplay are ‘way’ with a cringe… So many records are not worth listening because of failing to penetrate deeper than a dermatologist would. Call it elitism, snobbism or pure malicious dissitude but one’s brain box is a private prison and I’ll choose my chains, thank you.
Ladytron’s ‘Light&Magic’ provides a good reason to celebrate with something that is bad for your health, some classy Mary perhaps, or a marriage. Thus, this Liverpool band with international personnel is on the other, must-list that we embrace with fervour reserved for music as an art-form. The band displayed a distinct electro-pop take on their debut ‘604’, which they toured, all adding to an adventurous, confident and gallant second disc that requires firmer grasp in a mind-gym.
‘Seventeen’ is a realistic look at contemporary pop careers (that ruin lives), there is gentleness and fragility in ‘Black Plastic’ over a subtle funky beat, ‘Evil’ is an ‘orchestral’ piece – ending with across-the-dial noises, some sort of cut-up electronica – as well as the title track with its space-walkingly unreal vocals; ‘Nu Horizons’ is intense with its alienesque vocal, truly spellbinding is ‘Cease2xist’, ‘Startup Chime’ pulsates like an Armageddon-mechanism… There is a bonus track, ‘USA vs White Noise’.
There are echoes of Kraftwerk, DAF, Human League, Suicide, Numan, New Order but only in spirit as the reigns are definitely in Ladytron members’ hands all over these choons. Alas, this disc can’t match enlightenment or life-altering of the Krautrock and Neu Deutsche Welle (from the 1970s and 1980s respectively) pioneers, but it lays its own destiny’s concrete. These are electronically-crafted songs that are not soul-less but vibrating with cyber-intimacy. It might sound like an oxymoron but you are alone-amidst-everybody when onlining. The rest of humanity is ‘them’, unfortunately.
Ladytron-make is pop music with a telescope trailing an event horizon, strictly away from the sterile and stagnant universe; what we get is a tonal flurry of intelligence, complexity and density. They also have style that is missing so much these days; instead of a cascade of teasing-but-vacuous ‘kitten’ similes, we have a reason to mouth on. (Let’s keep it private, though.) Uniforms and static (live) presentations add to an aura of mystery to this two-boys two-girls outfit to make them appear endearingly cool but also distant, anti-iconoclastic with sex-appeal being immaterial. The twist is that it becomes its own antithesis, i.e. – an image.
There are no cheap thrills here, this is a serious business of creativity: aesthetic is observed, great pain endured over sonic details and ambiguous multilayering, sounds invested with TLC… The general feels of ‘Light&Magic’ is like a new journey into sanity regained after the ‘TV-Pop-Idols’ debacles…
Anyway, computer should be an extension of your imagination!
8.8/10
SashaS
20-10-2001
Ladytron album ‘Light&Magic’ is released 02 Dec. 2002 on Telstar/Invicta Hi-Fi
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