MIT - CODA

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JA! MIT are German. They play electronic music. They sound like Neu! And Kraftwerk. Of course they do: they’re German and they play electronic music. Their name must have something more symbolic to it than being simply the German for WITH but I don’t want to know it. Their lyrics must have some English translation but they sounds so shitting good in German that who could possibly give a horse’s cock what they mean either.

This isn’t music for understanding. This is marching music. This is dark marching music. Dark dancing music. Dancing in the dark music. We want to learn German if only to sing along, chant along and fall into line. “Sie heisen mir Herr Bombastisch, sehr fantastisch, herr liebhaber, liebhaber!”

MIT’s tunes unashamedly reference their German predecessors, wallowing in the filth left behind by their older stablemates. But they grab from elsewhere too, to keep things fresh, and to be there own man (-machine). Opener ‘Beispeil’ comes on with some of the tribal fury Liars have chosen to inject into their recent efforts, and Holy Fuck have claimed for their own.

Elsewhere the mash of glitch and vocal manipulations has more in common with Boards of Canada like on ‘Gibt Es Denn Keine Anderen Grund’ where whispering cries and snips of incongruous sound mix with endless repetition. Perhaps the most pertinent reference point is Suicide – electronic punk rock, words as weapons. ‘Merz’ has the beat to get you moving, and move you must, but MIT don’t make it easy – rejecting catchy hooks in favour of mantra-like repetition, doom-laden builds and damning cries.

The finest moment here comes after a good 35 minutes when ‘Rauch’ pipes up with a textbook example of how to get the body going. The Drums bounce off each other, the synths swirl, the bass pulses and the keynotes skip across the top with effortless taste.

While not for the faint-hearted Coda is an intense and rewarding trip. Wunderbar!

MALCOLM MIDDLETON - SLEIGHT OF HEART

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“This is shit, and that is shit, and being shit is great.” Good to see that Malc is his usual cheery, fun-packed self. After years playing with Aidan Moffat in Scotch indie miserablist-heroes Arab Strap Middleton has now released four albums, that is if you include this one? The nine-songs here were conceived during the recording of MalMid’s last album 'A Brighter Beat', and while that smacks of a cash-in, it’s only when you take into account the unlikelihood of MaMi selling enough records to break even that you realise that this record is more than likely pure of aim.

Following on from the (slightly) lifted mood of his last record MM’s tunes here are sung with a valium smile; real hope is for idiots after all. He is showing no sign of ditching the melancholy altogether, it’s too much a part of what he’s about, but the self-consciousness of previous efforts has been replaced by measured contentment or at least acceptance that things are getting better.

“It’s easy hating yourself, it’s hard making it rhyme,” he reasons in deceptively chirpy opener ‘The Week’. He’s got a point. It’s easy to me miserable, but it’s fooking hard to do it well. It’s the audacity of releasing an album of songs taken from the sessions of another record, complete with three Malcolmised covers that cements this new-found confidence. He knows that he can do miserable well and he’s showing off by being less miserable.

Sleight Of Heart has drinking anger: ‘Blue Plastic Bags’, love anger: ‘Love Comes In Waves’, and even Madonna anger: ‘Stay’. He claims King Creosote’s ‘Marguerita Red’ and Jackson C. Frank’s ‘Just Like Anything’ for his own and there is still enough time to slip in a few numbers aching with Jenny Reeve’s crying violin.

You get the feeling he could knock these songs out in his sleep, but therein lies the charm of this record. It has none of the care of his previous records but somehow sounds more genuine for it.