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Dusted Reviews
Artist: Le Dust Sucker Album: Two Label: Plong Review date: Jul. 5, 2007 |
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If you ever encountered Le Dust Sucker’s overwhelming 2003 single “Love Me,” stretched languorously over 12 inches of black vinyl, or grinding lasciviously at the tail end of Michael Mayer’s Fabric mix disc, you’re well aware of what this outfit is capable of. The song’s dirty, single-minded pound proffered techno’s other rapprochement with glam rock; instead of the knock-kneed stumble of schaffel, here was something as livid and raunchy as the guitars that crack open T-Rex’s “20th Century Boy.” Somehow Le Dust Sucker had, perhaps unintentionally, perfected the mix of sex, spit and strut that Goldfrapp had been trying to manifest but, no matter how elegantly honed their Strict Machines, never managed to square off.
I don’t imagine Le Dust Sucker will ever live down “Love Me” or its equally base flipside, “Mandate My Ass.” They’re still fond of jolting, shuddering bursts of borderline uncontrollable texture, as on Two’s “Everybody is Supermax” or “Smells Like Dog Kiss,” the latter of which chases incoherently jabbering cartoon Pacmans down wormholes in time. They’re also obsessed, as ever, with vocal tics and stutters, micro-editing girl choruses and boy blues moans until their hearts spasm in time with the flat-foot stomp. The bass on “School’s Out” is queasy, seasick and rubbery; the piano on “Last Birthday” is close to drunk.
But while Two holds together well enough as an index of discretely pleasurable moments, there’s something missing in the overall conception: at times, its fun appears hard-won, which means the album’s homogeneity ends up counter-productive to Le Dust Sucker’s light-hearted humor. Good ideas, it surely has a few, but I’m not sure I could sit through the whole thing again.
By Jon Dale
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