Idealism

Digitalism get idealistic



Digitalism - I Want I Want [mp3] (Idealism)

Anticipated dance albums don't always turn out well. Due to the nature of the genre, dance tunes are created to make you wanna shuffle your feet and often that doesn't translate well to a full length disc. The Chemical Brothers demonstrated that there are two good ways around around this. Firstly to segue tracks, treating the LP like a DJ set. This admits that material cannot be looked on as individual songs, but negates the need for solid song structure. Secondly, you can modify the music to direct it towards the home environment, adding vocals and pop song structure with choruses etc. The Chems used both these techniques pretty successfully on their album Dig Your Own Hole.

Digitalism have gone for the latter approach, and worked it well. When Pogo popped up on the internet a while back, sounding like Digitalism gone indie, I was instilled with a bit of hope for their album Idealism, in that they understood that stuffing an LP full of club tracks does not make for good listening. Justifying my optimism, they've definitely come through with a good selection of tunes, with enough variety for home listener and casual clubber. On this count the first half of the album is much stronger than the second, with current "nu-rave" fav Zdarlight, a stunning opener and indie-styled I want I want. The second half falls a little more into the dance album trap of indistinguishable noises, but has a strong finish via the storming Jupiter Room single.

So while there are some bland moments, the highs occasionally surpass even the sample stealing structure-light Daft Punk records they are so often compared with. Aye, they might have the same vocoder noises and slightly retro-future stylings but they manage to use these effects in a much more cogent and structured way. Idealism - a nice punchy dance record you can actually listen to.

Buy it here.