In the continuing craze of genre- invention that’s sweeping the planet, LCDS are, apparently, a ‘discopunk’ act. You may get an idea of what this sounds like if I tell you that The Rapture have released some pretty ‘discopunk’ material, and I’d imagine Warp Records’ !!! (pronounced chink, chink, chink) fall into the same bracket. So, as you may guess, LCDS is an album imbued with clashes, with contentious but classy cacophony. Even the artwork is very punk (in style and font) but then the actual picture on the cover is of an iconic disco-ball.
You can hear the influences straight away; bands like ESG, 23 Skidoo, Caberat Voltaire, or early Rough-Trade Records and certainly krautrock. But what’s also apparent is that we are on the other side of all this music now. ‘Tribulations’ has 303-led percussion and sampled guitars, while a song like ‘Yeah (Pretentious Version)’ is lovely, repetitive funk. If this all sounds like a bit of a mess, well, it is, but that’s what it’s about. As Cabaret Voltaire famously said to the NME “rock’n’roll isn’t about regurgitating Chuck Berry riffs”. And this is, as I also once saw it seriously described, ‘dancerock’ after-all. When it works, it really works; they seem to relax and stop trying so hard on gorgeous tunes like ‘Never As Tired As When I’m Waking Up’ and ‘The Great Release’, with layered reverbs and floating vocals.
But when it’s bad it’s grating, like the monotonous Mark E. Smith- wannabe vocals through the noisy guitars of ‘Movement’. If I had more time I’d continue but I must try and figure out how to get these safety pins onto my flares.