Simian Mobile Disco - "Attack Decay Sustain Release"

Simian Mobile Disco - Sleep Deprivation (Wichita 2007; removed by request)

Simian Mobile Disco - Attack Decay Sustain Release / Wichita

Oh right, Simian Mobile Disco. What's that about Justice dominating dancefloors lately? I guess James Ellis Ford and James Anthony Shaw will have a little something to say about that when this summer's finished; after all, it was they who formed the other half of the glorious single "We Are Your Friends" (nee "Never Be Alone") that got Kanye West all worked up. Appropriately (and expectedly) then, there is already a fan-brewing rivalry between † and Attack Decay Sustain Release. Either way you go, there's loaded symbolism in the title alone. Encrypted come-hithers or merely the technical terms for how sound works? Hearing the record won't help, I can tell you that much.

And whatever "blog-house" is, I guess this qualifies. Digression: One of the many reasons I've avoided bringing that phrase up is because it's almost completely illegitimate. If Justice is blog-house and Simian Mobile Disco is blog-house, you might as well classify VHS or Beta and The Juan Maclean and The Rapture and every other dance band from the last five years as blog-house. The DFA is blog-house. Talk about recontextualizing the last half-decade. Maybe bloggers just call it that because their memories are so short they can't even remember what they reviewed last week. Isn't that sad? Less is more, kids. You don't get anywhere posting advance tracks from Oink with no frame of reference other than what you read on all your friends' blogs. By the way, remember when this would've been New Rave a few months ago? Or is that punchline too soon?

Point is, Simian Mobile Disco are futuristic acid-house, straight up. "Sleep Deprivation," pure acid revivalism my friend. Sounds like it came straight out of the glory days of '90 or '91 when the stuff couldn't kill you but drinking too much water in the club could. Did they even have Thermionic Culture Vulture Distortion Units in those days? All credit to the two Jameses behind this piece of work, because they've somehow managed to not trick listeners into buying different versions of their early Kitsune singles and multitude of remixes. Nevermind Brianstorm, did you hear the sirens on Klaxons' quasi-legendary "Atlantis to Interzone"? Remember how that vaguely reminded people of The Prodigy? Well, here we are folks: "Tits & Acid" brings them back with glorious glitchery clouding what stands as one of their better jigs. And then comes "I Believe." Sounds like it came straight from FutureSex/LoveSounds, I swear... Not that it's a bad thing. I mean, as a responsible blogger, I'm supposed to say how much I respect Justin Timberlake now and how affecting I thought "My Love" was.

Here's the thing, though: I've injected a lot of how I feel about the reactions to this record rather than the record itself. The official Audiversity stance is: Yeah, it's better than Justice's LP and it's a brilliant dance record besides. Part of the reason is because Justice veers dangerously close to self-parody on more than one occasion during the course of its full-length, which is great if you want more of what you expected. But Simian Mobile Disco are different because they understand perhaps better than their French counterparts that one-upping Daft Punk every track for an entire album gets old for bloggers, er, normal listeners. So they mix it up a bit, throwing in the aforementioned acid-house with their own take on Frelectro, punk-funk, minimalist tech, futuristic pop and Italdisco to create a seamless blend of all the above. It sounds like it would be a sleek, beat-driven mess. Maybe it would be boringly beat-driven if it weren't for the vocal tracks, but Ford and Shaw are clever. They balance one out with the other.

This is part of why Attack Decay Sustain Release works. "It's the Beat" is the first single and with all its sass seems perfect for dancefloors, but that one's obvious. "I Believe" is the cooldown mid-album and could not have been more perfectly placed. It really is the "My Love" of SMD's debut, but it's both glorious and gloriously cheesy in its own way. Namely: It doesn't have T.I., but it does have that uneasy early-90s disposable dance-pop feel to it (Be on the lookout for this one in July when underrated remixer Switch and Prins Thomas get their hands on it). Sensibly, the duo change pace so you don't spend too much time mulling it over. "Hotdog" kicks it back up, but the vocals play the same role they do in so many other songs here in the sense that they're so ridiculous you can't help but ignore them for the dance. It's better that way, though I wouldn't be surprised to see "Put 'em all together and what do you get? Ding-dong" on more than a few MySpace profiles by the end of the month. To follow that up with mostly instrumental "Wooden" is necessary as we start to reach the end of the journey. It feels well-placed. Everything here does.

From the Korg MS-20s to the Boss PC-2 synths that attack and sustain throughout the course of the album, it's Ford and Shaw's experience with their old group Simian that allows Attack Decay Sustain Release to linger long after you've turned it off. The beats are great, the electronic gimmickry expected, but the innate melodies of the songs, the hooks that bait you right from the off and don't let go until it's over - those are what put this duo ahead of all their peers. Justice may have its illuminated cross hypnotizing the masses, but Simian Mobile Disco are doing it the old-fashioned way with a few key tools and a knack for hooks; the real test will come when this one's only a distant memory of weighty expectations and breathless anticipation. Simian Mobile Disco have survived it all with one of the best dance records in a year of great dance records. For now, the easy part is over.