As if to underline the incredibly 80’s nature of their 2-man ‘pop partnership’, the debut mini-LP from Leeds electro-rockers I LOVE POLAND opens with a distinctly odd cover version of The Smiths’ classic ‘Still Ill’ from that very decade!! Re-titled ‘Not Ill’, and reworked into a bleeping, grinding, synth-driven parody, it ironically sounds at least 5 times more poorly than the original!
Experimental is the word I guess, using the binary/analogue synthesiser heyday of the early 1980s as a basis for dark and incredibly improvised sounding ditties with titles like ‘Speaker’ and ‘Kill yourself’, the latter a thumping breakbeat chime with the rhythms of the dancefloor embedded into its self-harming structure.
As darkened disco goes, this is a release that takes advantage of hypnotic looping techniques to grow and grow upon the listener until the oddly compulsive sounds impress themselves firmly upon the psyche. Bens vocals drag across the machinations of the squeaking pulse like nails down a blackboard, which is perfectly in line with their version of personal and emotional apocalypse.
|
Another fruitful offering from the country’s most diverse and creative music scene over in West Yorkshire, ILP drag the video age firmly up to speed with the dawn of the new century with near-effortless intrigue aplenty. Their sound is a predisposition to twisted thought and tragic irony, and a shrine to all things halcyon about the days when pop duos pervaded the charts by the dozen.
It also celebrates diversity as a matter of course. Interesting is not THE word, but interesting it most certainly is!
www.ilovepoland.org
www.myspace.com/ilovepolandpopgroup
|
