Midnight Juggernauts - Uncanny Valley (Album Review)
Monday, 05 August 2013
Written by Charlie Hurt
‘Uncanny Valley’ - named after a hypothesis by roboticist Masahiro Mori - was never going to be dull. Midnight Juggernauts have never been so, having previously produced three albums of genre-bending glitter music.This latest release comes after a successful tour with fellow Australian psychedelic rockers Tame Impala, and they have again come up with a unique, challenging record.
The album opens with HCL, which initially echoes the Beatles' Within You Without You before the synths kick in. We’re in take off mode for the first half of the track, but by the second half we’re in space. Frontman Vincent Vendetta melts in and out of the background with a chant of: “Circumnavigate the sun”.
Ballad Of The War Machine, the album’s lead-off track, comes next and sends us deeper into orbit, offering a big chorus and a real taste of the production quality at hand, having earlier been released as a secretive online clip.
Memoriam follows, having also been given the video treatment, and although it possesses energy and house elements, it lacks hooks of any kind.
Sugar And Bullets is the most fun stay so far and rejuvenates the record, while Systematic comes seven tracks in and is just that, offering order, hooks and direction.
There are stranger and darker planets ahead with detours aplenty, but if you make it through you'll end up with final track Melodiya, which is an open and uplifting piece of dance music, accompanied by a chorus of: “I can breathe, I can breathe, I can breathe again.”
There are some great melodic moments, interesting ideas and brilliant production here, with a seamless flow from one track to another, but too many times Midnight Juggernauts veer off when they were getting somewhere. Take the ride if you've no set destinantion, but be ready for some turbulence.
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