Album Review: Simian Mobile Disco - Unpatterns

Hi there, dear Drum reader! Come with me to this trendy new club that's been playing the new Simian Mobile Disco album. People have been entering in droves and not leaving so it must be alright. Those pulsing chimes in I Waited For You sure are an enticing appetiser as we descend the darkened stairwell. Actually, there's not much light down here at all. I think the dancefloor is over there under that smoky electric blue slow-strobe. Cerulean and Seraphim continue an analogue techno journey that belies the bigger beats of their first two albums. Didn't Orbital do this with more depth back in 1991? Three songs in and I still don't feel like dancing. Waitasec. Are those punters occupying the walls of this gloomy cavern? They look pretty vacant, gaunt like supermodels without a catwalk, staring right through us as the bland beats worm through their brains. Peering through the shadows, we see the place is packed. But it's terrifyingly still, as though we're amongst comatose zombies being sonically recharged.

Over halfway through Unpatterns and there's still little life to be found in the cold noise dripping from the speakers. Some comfort briefly arrives in Put Your Hands Together, which takes flight oh so briefly. Was that movement I saw out of the corner of my eye? Nope, it was a straw falling from the open gonk of one of the ghouls. Pareidolia closes out, its dying drones sounding the sapping of once vibrant souls. We edge towards the exit instilled by a real sense of paranoia from the unforgiving dullness of what should have been a continuation of a massive party. We pray the doors haven't been locked.