Perc
Pure & Simple (Sleaze Records)
Hard techno is currently in rude health and, like Actress or Shed, Ali Wells is one of the scene's more unique voices. His last album, Wicker & Steel, was a beautifully bleak industrial techno benchmark: a fitting soundtrack to a country on the slide. Wells is bemused by any socio-political reading of his music but, even here, where he is simply toying with the dancefloor, Perc sounds grave. Like Blawan's recent grimey, booming Tuesday's March, Pure & Simple makes the idea of dancing hard in a darkened warehouse seem less like an option, and more like an immediate compelling necessity. It is one way to ride out a crisis, existential or economic.
We Are Augustines
Book Of James (Oxcart Records)
If Bruce Springsteen were dead or retired, it might explain his tribute bands, your Hold Steadys and Gaslight Anthems. As it is, history's second most important Boss (after Hugo) is still at it and, unlike this New York trio, he hasn't resorted to fitting out his songs with great clunking, stadium-ready, quiet/loud triggers, in the style of that other famous amateur dramatic ensemble, Kings Of Leon.
Shuttle
Halo (Ninja Tune)
US hip-hop has gone all Ravey Davey, and now Boston's indie set – Passion Pit drummer Nathan "Shuttle" Donmoyer, and singer Isom Innis - are reaching for the lasers. Halo sounds, improbably, like MGMT tackling T99's breakbeat rave anthem Anasthasia. Which, in its slightly whiny, slightly reticent, hip-in-Williamsburg way, is no match for, say, Nicki Minaj's mighty, unhinged Starships. Hardcore? She knows the score.
Injured Birds
Happy As Clams (Denizen Recordings)
You know that not at all nauseating, totally realistic match.com advert, where the bloke serenades a girl across the platform while playing a ukulele? He'd love this. Me? Not so much. Nottingham's answer to Bon Iver claims the blurb, but at least the beardy fella pours his guts into it. This is pleasant, thoroughly nice, very British. And who's got time for that? We're all dying.
Proxy
Shut Up! (Turbo Recordings)
Does anyone listen to blustering Ed Banger electro any more, since Boys Noize hooked-up with the Black Eyed Peas? But, hidden away in Vladivostok, with only fading memories of seeing the Prodigy play Red Square to inspire him, Evgeny Pozharnov brings a fresh strangeness and instability to this bankrupt micro-genre. Shut Up!, all terror-techno squall and aggro MC samples, isn't quite up there with his classic sweet soul, neo-rave apocalypse Dance In Dark, but, still, the earth moves.
P!nk
Blow Me (One Last Kiss) (RCA)
She's having a "shit day" and, if you've heard this, you're probably having one too. Thanks for sharing!
