New New Musical Express - November 2009

Journal: Dibder's New Music Series: Entry 11, by CvaldaVessalis

Excerpt:

DJ Stupac Presents... Super Lupe Bros. 1st Coin & 15th Credit Edition by DJ Stupac and Lupe Fiasco
(P.S. Sorry, but cannot find a legit site anywhere, so a pic file will have to do on the link to assure its existence...!)
This mixtape certainly receives the prize for Best Artwork Of The Year so far from me, my fondness for all Super Mario adventures pretty much hardwiring that sentiment to my brain. But of course, this is just a promotional appetiser for Mr Fiasco’s upcoming Lasers album, collating a few new cuts (particularly his latest collaboration with Matthew Santos, Shining Down) with older wares and remixes, such as Pharrell's quite lovely re-do of Paris, Tokyo featuring special guests Q-Tip and Sarah Green. As mixtapes go though, DJ Stupac doesn’t really interpolate as well as some of his peers (nothing is really remixed here, rather compiled), and I’m personally a little disappointed that he didn’t carry on the Super Mario motif all of the way through, seeing as those games feature some of the most highly-regarded scores in video game history. But as a precursor to Lupe’s upcoming opus, it whets the appetite wantonly.

Turning The Mind by Maps
Riding high off of garlands from those fickle music critics and a Mercury Prize nomination for his debut album We Can Create, Northampton native James Chapman continues on his electro-pop pledge with this fine sophomore album, which embraces elements of rock, house, trance and pop to create a nebulous whitewash of at-times inspired electro symphonies. Described by Chapman himself as being of a darker hue that his previous effort (which comes to the fore most ominously on the opening title track and Papercuts), it eventually gives way to an understanding Zen-like attitude to existence, cheerily exemplified by penultimate number Die Happy, Die Smiling. For those who are a little dismayed by how perky and bright most of the electropop this year has been, this one is most certainly for you.

Lovetune For Vacuum by Soap&Skin
I’m a little late to the party with adorning 19-year-old Anja Plaschg with plaudits like “debut album of the year” and such, but hey, I’m glad I took the time to listen to her striking premier work at all, never mind seven months after its release. Influences from the likes of Xiu Xiu, Björk and Aphex Twin in particular find plenty of room on her debut, which is a mix of layered vocals (at times anguished, at times sultry, never less than swoonsome) and frankly gorgeous piano work spliced with surging electronic beats and bass synths that never ceases to impress among the thirteen tracks on offer here. “Prodigious” is a word often tossed around when writing about breakthrough artists, but the assured hand with which she composes and produces these works (standout moments being the instrumental Turbine Womb and the mounting industrial glitch of DDMMYYYY) promises an interesting future ahead of her.

And that is why Lovetune For Vacuum is my Album Of The Month For November...