It's wonderful when you can't define an album in a sentence. It's even better when you can't pin it down to one genre. It means that the artist has created something truly unique, something innovative. This is exactly what Skint Records founder, Damien Harris, has achieved. He's carved a giant square peg that no matter how much you oil it up, you can't force into any of those 12" holes. Superb though these albums are, and this offering definitely ushers a new kind of musical finesse to the mixing table, they are a pissing nightmare for the hapless writer assigned to review it.
I can't tell you what this albums sounds, I just can't. Not without rambling incoherently like a genre-obsessed Rainman. I could try and make up my own pathetic new sub-genres by sticking together the basics with an ill-advised hyphen, but they won't work and you'll end up hating me. Just one look at Harris' collaborators makes me want to tear up my thesaurus. The album is an electronic record and is, for the most part, dance music of some variety... and it's incredibly good. Will that suffice?
To remedy this problem, I have decide to list the elements that make up this album. You may think of it as a recipe if you wish for Midfield General's second album.
- A respectable amount of wailing klaxons
- Acid-rave stabs
- A fabulously effortless D.A.N.C.E-esque bassline to 'Disco Siren' courtesy of Justice's Xavier De Rosnay
- A brief vocal cameo from Pedro Winter
- An oddly narrated story about grass seeds by Noel Fielding
- Gritty, pounding, ear-bleed drums.
- Laid-back hip hop grooves that sound like the end of a DJ Yoda mix-tape.
- A manic, pop-tastic waltzer track with the Robots in Disguise
- Frenetic piano samples
- Panic-stricken beeping
- Iridescent twinkles
- Robot vocals
- Almost euphoric breakdowns
- Dave from Soulwax sprinkling some electroey nonsense.
- Bumblebeez' vocalist Vila spitting some lyrics
- Thump, thump, thump
- Actor Ralph Brown chattin' shit
- Dreamy, Sunset-Strip-soundtrack chill out strings.
- Foreboding organ music
- Lucky Jim
- Miminal casio-pop
I'm going to stop there. This record is fantastic. Buy it. Buy it now. I'm sorry I can't explain to you properly why you should buy it, but the very fact that I can't should make you want to buy it all the more.