Chromatics - Kill for Love...

"I got a new rose, I got her good" - know the feeling when you find a new love?!....Oh yes you do, and this latest offering from Chromatics (Italians Do It Better label) has grabbed me by the heart & hand and could well be my favourite album of the year, pushing Mark Lanegan's superb 'Blues Funeral' off of my current top spot  - well, we shall see and time will tell.  Every once in a while, a jewel (no pun intended..!!) of an album appears, and 'Kill for Love' is just that.

Featuring the considerable talents of Italians Do it Better label co-founder Johnny Jewel, singer Ruth Radelet, Adam Miller and Nat Walker on guitar and drums respectively, Kill For Love skillfully mixes noir electro-pop and guitar spangled moments with pure cinematic bliss.   I love the way this album sounds, the production is not overblown, no histrionics here...it is spatial & everything follows and fits so well together.  It is a soundtrack for driving miles and miles to, yes... it is long, it is a journey going through day & night, a visceral thrill ...it invokes wonderful cinematic flashes - I think of Cronenberg's Crash, Lynch's Mulholland Drive, Deckard and Rachael in Bladerunner etc etc. 

The opening track 'Into the Black', a cover of Neil Young's 'Hey Hey, My My' is beautifully executed by Radelet, it is sophisticated and understated and sets up the score of what is to come....there is a lot to love and from here on in, we are exposed to some spine tingling songwriting and composition.  Title track 'Kill for Love' and its neon arpeggio electro brilliance is coupled with some New Order-esque guitar work and Ruth Radelet coolly tells us her story:

Everybody's got a secret to hide, 

Everyone is slipping backwards, 

I drank the water and I felt alright, 

I took a pill almost every night
In my mind I was waiting for change, 

While the world just stayed the same.....

I can't remember if I like what I said
I can't remember it went straight to my head
I kept a bottle by the foot of the bed
I put a pillow right on top of my head
But I killed for love....

Emulating the heartbeat of the night, a stand out quartet of songs 'The Page',  'Lady', the glittering spire of 'Candy' and the sublime 'These Streets Will Never Look the Same' continue the journey - I really sense those feelings of being in limbo, of metropolitan isolation, decaying love etc and Chromatics convey this very well and in much the same way as say Burial does.  These feelings only deepen as one gets totally lost in the instrumentals, particularly 'Broken Mirrors' and finale 'No Escape'.  

Kill for Love is of breathtaking, hypnotic quality, it is the stuff that dreams are made of and I eagerly await Chromatics next chapter.

it's all about Gary....

Now I'm not into the order of ABC (although I do have a penchant for a gold lame jacket a la Martin Fry but that is another story.....) so I will start with the letter G........for Gary....Numan. There is no doubt that GN is an absolute electronic pioneer, who paved the way for many during the 80's and onwards.  I remember being totally entranced by his Tubeway Army TOTP appearance of 'Are Friends Electric', he was so perfectly packaged and a breath of fresh air, and subsequently fell in love with his synth driven hooks.

Recently I went Back to the Future again, and me and my 'electric' friend Andrew, caught GN on his latest 'Machine Music' tour in Bristol, efficiently supported by Officers.  Concentrating on his key singles, GN has definitely not stood still in some electronic 80's time capsule, but has become something of a consummate industrial style rock god, the synths are still very much there but used to enhance the overall edge of his sound.


GN turned up the heat (quite literally - we were surrounded by sweating Numanoids in past tour T shirts - Gary apparently had asked for the air-con to be turned right down in the O2 so that the dry ice machine could do its thing and GN's chief sidekick Ade Fenton also later commented that the stage had become an ice-rink, anyway I digress...) with fine, driven performances of 'Berserker', 'Metal', 'Bombers', 'This Wreckage' et al,  alongside newer material such as 'The Fall' and one of my personal fave's of the night 'In a Dark Place' off of the Jagged album.  There was overwhelming rapture for a faithful version of 'I Die You Die' and the appearances of old bandmates rRussell Bell & Chris Payne, finally culminating with encore crowd-pleasers 'Cars' and a wonderfully stripped back 'Are Friends Electric' and with that Gary & his cohorts disappear into the Bristol night air.  Thank you Gary, it was a joy to watch....

Electro/Indie passion.....

Ever since I can remember, music has been an absorbing, all-consuming passion and it has punctuated all my memories, I have tried to walk away from it sometimes but it always sucks me back in!!!.....when I was very young, Scott Walker and Beethoven notably, permeated the walls of my parents house, then when I acquired my own means in my teens, of playing music, it was under-the-covers covert listening to Radio Luxembourg etc and of course the inimitable and wonderful John Peel on Radio 1.....like it was & is for so many others growing up in the late 70's/80's era, Peel well and truly sowed the seeds of what has become pretty much, my life long love affair with electronic and indie/alternative music in particular.

This blog is intended not just to be a retrospective of those artists who I feel have contributed (in my 'dark-centric' opinion!) so much to these genres but to highlight the new and emerging talent...so let's light the fuse...............