Alden Tyrell - Times Like These (1999-2006)
Clone

As one of the first producers to return to the sounds that made up early Italo-disco Alden Tyrell was one of the few modern artists to feature on I-F’s influential Mixed Up in the Hague, the mix which sent diggers to the crates to scrabble for previously dismissed early-80s electronic disco and producers to their equipment to try to recreate it. Times Like These gathers on CD some of the best of his past work and a few new tracks. Tyrell’s post–house and techno take on Italo is trackier, more explicitly electro dance-floor functional than the trashy, wannabe commercial originals but still works best when it retains at least vestigial attachment to song form. On “Love Explosion 05”, a vocal rework of a track from ’99, old school Italoid Fred Ventura emotes soft-rock sweet nothings over filtered white-noise snares and hi-hats. It sounds as cheap as the sentiment. The other vocal guest, Nancy Fortune, brings the over-enunciated second language English to the motorik space dust of “La Voix.” “Knockers” compares and contrasts the ever-present synth arpeggios with cyclic tom tom rolls and fills. I ad-lib lyrics about being a sultry time-travelling space woman over the Liaisons Dangereuses percussion of “Phaze Me” but that’s only in the privacy of my own room. You might just want to dance instead; I strongly recommend it.

Justice - Waters of Nazareth
Ed Banger Records

Here’s a handy six track UK CD that combines one of the biggest records of 2005 with a brace of remixes (there’s also a 12” issue with just the new tracks.) I’m sure that most people reading this are aware of the original “Waters of Nazareth”—house music that’s been backspun then kaleidoscopically chopped, compressed and digitally distressed until it’s less le French touch, more le French punch. Justice and Feadz’ new take on it splits it into disassociative shards of crappy beat-box, bass drops and mobile phone siren, before becoming more four-to-the-floor than they’ve ever been for, oh, fifty seconds at least. Erol Alkan’s ‘remix and re-edit’ (choose one or the other, you can’t do both) adds some space, playing up drum hooks and cathedral organ. Except for the DJ Funk mix, standard booty biz that fucks the flow, this sounds like one long track, such is the homogenising power of the ever-present distortion.

Lotterboys - Animalia
Eskimo

Combine Terranova with Paris the Black Fu from the Detroit Grand Pubahs and what do you get? In their own words “electrofunkypunkrockband” (oh god) The Lotterboys. What else do you get? Tremolo-ed live guitar, punk funk bass, block party disco breaks, overdriven snare clatter and chopped trumpet samples—which at it’s worst sounds like the oft-threatened return of big beat or, when Paris’ vocals come in, outtakes from Fatboy Slim’s deeply unfunky Freakpower project. Occasionally it works; “Star Whores” pool hall crack and swagger and the Dirtbombs-like garage punk of “Wired and Tired” convince as does, most unexpectedly, the cover of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” where lead-boot syncopation meets “It’s the Joint” drum rolls. Princess Superstar provides the “Death Valley 69” backing moans. But aside from everything else, how you get on with this album will be determined by your tolerance for Paris’ wobbly loverman pastiche baritone, his love for puns that don’t quite and scribbled on a napkin backstage clichés. Sometimes he replaces the word fuck with funk. It’s that type of album.

From Stylus.