Minilogue - Elephant's Parade/Bird Song

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  • Sweden's Minilogue have had quite a year. After their understated chart-topper 'Girl From Botany Bay', 2006 has seen Mark Henriksson and Sebastian Mullaert move from strength to strength, producing a string of jerky minimal hits for Traum, Crosstown Rebels, Audiobahn and Silver Planet. Their latest for Mathew Jonson's Wagon Repair label could possibly top the lot. While the title nods towards DJ Koze's 'Clubfoot', 'Elephant's Parade' is not nearly so brash or artfully clumsy. Rather we're treated to a typically polite intro of minimal percussive tics, pops and seasonal sleigh bells before the rabbit is pulled from the hat in the form of wildly zig-zagging bleep lines with little or no melodic basis. While the boom-chkk powers everything forward, it’s these bouncing tones that captivate, like Nathan Fake's 'Dinamo' pushed down a helter skelter. As these lurch in both pitch and timbre, as though driven on L plates, families of high pitched arpeggios offer further titillation over its 10+ never-dull minutes. 'Birdsong' is even better, built around an instantly intoxicating swollen low-end hook and an almost unvarying rhythm track, it has the kind of restless motorik drive you could happily chug away to for hours. The cry of real seagulls supply the track it's title while synthetic duplicates take over the break, but this is mostly about a winning riff and bassline joyously recycled, a welcome update on the Basic Channel dub techno template. Another feather in Minilogue's plume-heavy cap with excitement equally thrust at both head and shimmying ass.
  • Tracklist
      A1 Elephant's Parade B1 Birdsong
RA