Album Review: Electronic Earth

Labrinth (Timothy McKenzie to his friends) has the perhaps dubious honour of getting signed to the world's most famous 'talent'-scout douchebag Simon Cowell's label without having to sell his soul and embarrass himself on his television show.

McKenzie is not just the computer enhanced singer of Electronic Earth, he also acts as the album's producer and maybe this is his big strength. It's certainly not in his songwriting – the lyrics are mostly laughable and inter-changeable song to song, and his voice is so heavily affected that it's hard to even imagine what his actual voice sounds like. It starts with the overly sugary pop harmony-fest Climb On Board, bolstered somewhat by a frantic drum and bass beat. The single Earthquake relies on a catchy as hell synth line for the main melody, which makes the track the hit that it is. The lyrics predicting that he's changing the world and that his music will cause an earthquake are a hollow threat at best. Last Time, Sundown and Sweet Riot work for similar reasons – his use of fat synths to build melody is the best trick in his book.

There's a bizarre half-cover of the Charles Wright song Express Yourself with the funky drummer loop, and a misplaced synth riff fighting with the track's original bassline. An interesting idea maybe, but it totally misfires. The rest of the record is predictable slow jams of various quality, certainly none that stand out from each other as anything to get excited about.

While Electronic Earth offers up some almost experimental