Milan-based four-piece The Love Supreme describe themselves as 'Sonic-experimentalist, Krautrock-inspired, Muso-heads,' and their music as falling in the 'disco / indie' category. All well and good in theory, and, remarkably, in practice too.
Ok, so 'New Millennium Freaks' is perhaps a little patchy: the more indie-styled songs aren't nearly as successful in terms of composition or atmosphere as the more overtly electro numbers, but when they find their stride in this vein, The Love Supreme deliver some vintage-sounding gems. 'Elsewhere Once More' is a magnificent construction of blips and beeps riding atop swatches of wide sweeping ambience, a vintage style retro-futurist slice of electro, rendered contemporary by the judicious use of spoken samples. The bands they cite - Faust, Can and Amon Duul II, Tangerine Dream - are paid due homage and the bleeps and swirls are delivered with aplomb. When at their best, The Love Supreme are every bit as good as Kraftwerk. When they're not at their best, they're a little cheesy and a little forced-sounding, but fun nevertheless. 'Sugar' is reminiscent of DAF after they'd gone pop. It sounds strangely dated.
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There's no question that TLS are obsessed with the 70s and early 80s. I am, too, to an extent. For this reason, and as a huge Bauhaus fan, I'm perhaps a little precious when it comes to covers of their songs. Few would refute the 'classic' status of their debut, the goth blueprint 'Bella Lugosi's Dead.' I can of course fully appreciate why a band might want to play it - it's a great tune, and only has three chords - but that doesn't mean that they should. The Love Supreme don't make a bad fist of it, I have to admit but it still sounds like a rather generic darkwave rendition that attempts to reproduce the original but with a more 'contemporary' slant. Yes, it's ok, but ultimately pointless.
Still, one track does not an album make, and the eleven other songs on 'New Millennium Freaks' do contrive to yield an album that's coherent, and also a refreshing change from the indie-boy sonic wallpaper that's marked the last few years.
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