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Dusted Reviews
Artist: Junior Boys Album: Body Language Six Label: Get Physical Review date: Mar. 11, 2008 |
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For their first official mix CD, Junior Boys craft a self-portrait of sorts, collaged from the works of others. While Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus may have traded in the skip and stutter glitch -pop of their early material for glacial elegance on 2006's So This Is Goodbye, their songs remain informed by the dancefloor. Well-appointed parcels of crisp, metallic rhythm are wrapped in vaporous frequencies and viscid modulations, all diluted by the slightly bleary, sleepless calm of Greenspan's breathy croon.
Opening in a mist of synth dew and closing with the tinkling glass and chiming metals of Bill Nelson's "When Your Dream Of Perfect Beauty Comes True," Body Language Six is neither stitched with anonymous, assembly line efficiency nor does it revel in the errors and record-collection randomness of home-knit eclecticism. A familiar set of players fill its ranks, among them the tingling synth drizzle of Supermayer's "Saturndays"; the smudgy incantations of Kelly Pollar's "Roseband (Magic Tim's Instrumental Version)"; the pitch-black drones and flitting neon of Radio Slave's "Screaming Hands (Cosmo Vitelli Radioaktivitat Remix)"; Studio's disco-pumped Balearic breezer "Life's A Beach! (Todd Terje Beach House Mix)"; and the panic palpitations of "Dark Chapter" from former Junior Boy Jonny Dark's new Stereo Image project.
With 16 of the 19 selections dating from 2007 or making their debut here, Body Language Six feels like the Boys' belated year-end review. But it also offers a glimpse of what the future might hold – a new Junior Boys song called "No Kinda Man" is tucked near the CD's final stretch. And as a bonus for fans, Junior Boys let the track unfurl in its entirety though not without prefacing it with some context. The song is preceded by Pushé's glimmering disco galaxy and the chugging pulse and crushed-tin snares in Visage's Thunderdome theatrics. "No Kinda Man" comes from the same nuclear winter wonderland, a still-water ballad amid a coursing stream of rhythms. Before ending, it builds a bridge out of its half-lit lagoon of regret with a coda awash in melting synths, distortion chunks and a lisping hi-hat.
Two fans' ode to a genre they adore from a close distance, Body Language Six easily nudges into Junior Boys' compact but consistent discography. It's the requisite night out before all their melancholy mornings.
By Bernardo Rondeau
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