Formed in the spring of 1998 by Vito Roccoforte and Luke Jenner and inspired by punky new-wavers PIL and Televison, The Rapture typify the avant-garde New York DIY garage thing going on at the moment. Like Le Tigre, you could be forgiven for thinking you’ve suddenly fallen for all the synthetic charms of dance. Not the Kylie Minogue kind of dance, you understand, the cool kind. The kind of phlegmatic sonic sizzle you find in dodgy downtown bars on the velvet underground, and best represented by classic art-house act, Fischerspooner.
Already two records into their career (an 8-song LP released on the seminal San Diego art punk label, Gravity Records, and a single released on Sonny Kaye’s Gold Standard Laboratories) and having relocated to New York from their less than ideal Californian home territory, ‘Echoes’ sees the band cementing their tasty blend of stomping, burned-out beats and jerky riffing with able producers, the DFA.
Tim Goldsworthy and James Murphy are music veterans and the co-proprietors of Plantain Studios, one of New York’s foremost recording facilities. With a warped, eclectic range of tastes, which embraces everything from techno, jazz, kraut rock and dub, the DFA, as they are known, have a characteristically belligerent and radical approach to recording – continuing the ethics of punk with more than a couple of neat hand tricks prised from the grip of dance music. And almost immediately their remixes for bands like Le Tigre have established the DFA signature: disco funk and electronic. And if you’re looking for proof on this album, look no further than current single ‘House Of Jealous Lovers’. Hardcore disco bassline, insistent kick beat, funky cowbell and epileptic vocal. It steals outrageously from the hands of PIL, but it’s still somehow successful in its own right, thanks to the tangential, spiky riffing and blistering retro handclaps. Less kind however, is title track ‘Echoes’ which is a pretty much unmodified Lydon steal, and there’s little more pathetic in life than a poor thief.
Far better though, are songs like ‘Olio’. It still resounds with the static charge of techno and the muffled screams of punk but it’s cool and quality mood music. ‘Heaven’ is a similar case in point, it recalls the jerky peculiarities of PIL, but it’s also a laudable attempt at something original. What exactly? I’m not sure, but it works in this context.
Oddly enough, it’s the tracks where the DFA are at their less obvious that shine for this little starbuck. ‘Open Up Your Heart’ bleeds with the less than bearable sincerity of Daniel Johnston, and ‘Love Is All’ is as delicious as they come, with its trilling high altitude vocal and its sweet and solitary melodies. And the heavy and doom laden ‘Infatuation’ matches Thom Yorke for sweltering and angsty beauty. Surreal, but utterly charming.
They might be tad too ‘of the moment’ but it’s a promising sign of what is to come.