Lunar Tunes

While Salem continue to incant and toil away over their potent purple potion making music perfect for accompanying codeine assisted drowning deaths in Jacuzzis with all the lights off at night, their Chicago based associates, Young Cream appear to be more intent on influencing impressionable revellers to click their joints out of place in the midst of furious dance-storms with their slightly damaged brand of gothic ghettotech that possesses more than just a little bit of a manic strut in it‘s step. Chopping up displaced third world rhythms with the frenzied mechani-crunk beats of DJ Funk or DJ Slugo this is essentially juke music for 8-bit freaks who see the world through pixelated eyes and who find themselves regularly abused and violated by the wires of Nintendo consoles possessed by the power of Proteus. “0″ may hold some clues as to how things might have turned out had the Pharoah fascinated psyches of Gang Gang Dance developed an obsession with Purple Beats and immersed themselves solely in the sounds of booty house for Saint Dymphna.

Young Cream – 0

Released on the always impressive Good Life label, purveyors of the finest cybernetic euro-pop, Parisian gentleman Gesaffelstein creates glacial slabs of impeccable ice-cold electronic noise that seem to emanate so naturally out of the wired brains of immaculately coiffured men who dream of nightimes spent prowling through cold, industrial cityscapes dressed up like Roxy Music gigolo-bots, to end up regularly congregating with likeminded replicants in dankly lit, underground dancehalls haunted by the ghosts of Kraftwerk and DAF, peering nonchalantly through vapor mists for pale faced women with sharp midnight lipstick lips and that familiar melancholy look in the eyes.

Gesaffelstein – Video Exposition

Channeling Madonna at a time when she was poisonously sexy and seemed to rule the world with a flick of her wrist by sampling her infamous call to arms from Vogue,  this unjustly and sadly forgotten UK hardcore gem made by Epitome Of Hype in 1991 makes me wish I was just a little bit older so I could have at least enjoyed this stuff first time around. Nay matter. Produced with impeccable dance floor precision by the Blapps Posse Madonna’s serpentine vocal line is repeated over and over until it begins to feel like an incantation is taking place over the bleeps of a malfunctioning computer and the squelching acid 303 line that make this feel like such a dark delight.

Epitome Of Hype – Ladies With An Attitude