The British indie rock group Simian reached the peak of their fame when two obscure French producers by the pseudonym 'Justice' took the vocal tracks from their song, "Never Be Alone," and created the electro-house mega hit, "We Are Your Friends." Fortunately for those frequenting discotheques worldwide, that would not be the last contribution the members of Simian would have to the dance floor.
After disbanding in 2005, Simian members James Ford and James Shaw formed Simian Mobile Disco, the fruition of Simian's never fully realized electronic tendencies. Having dropped their guitars and picked up analog synthesizers, Ford and Shaw began their career as a pastiche production duo, remixing British indie acts like the Klaxons, the Go! Team and Muse.
Having bridged the gap (that is becoming thinner and thinner) between indie rock and electronic music, the duo became creatively restless and thus began producing their own music. After a barrage of singles, the band's creative momentum spiked with the recently-released debut full-length album Attack Decay Sustain Release, a compilation that excels at being what it sets out to be — a coherent party album combining elements of house music with pop.
Attack Decay Sustain Release kicks off with "Sleep Deprivation," a song that illustrates Simian Mobile Disco's mastery of "good, old-fashioned analogue party music," as they so eloquently describe their sound on their MySpace webpage. From the four-on-the-floor drums to arpeggiated synthesizers to the drumless breakdowns that anticipate the song's climax, Simian Mobile Disco establish their insatiable appetite for all the basic ingredients of acid house music in this opener.
Simian Mobile Disco then goes on to demonstrate their ability to make electronic music accessible to those who would not normally identify with the genre. The album's salient single, "It's the Beat," integrates the best aspects of house music and pop, and the inexorable synth-pop anthem "I Believe" could potentially be one of year's best songs thus far.
Half of the songs on Attack Decay Sustain Release were released well in advance of the album. The song "Hustler" has been a club standard for almost a year, and its music video depicting a Sapphic game of Telephone has become a YouTube classic. With five of the ten songs on the album already singles, the album plays more like a 12-inch on steroids than your average full-length.
But Attack Decay Sustain Release has very little to offer in terms of lyrical depth. In "Love," Barry Dobbin of the indie band Clor sings one of the most tautological choruses of all-time: "Love is all you need to know/ And all you need to know is/ Love is all you need/ To know." Note: He makes a 21-word sentence using only eight different words. Ridiculous.
But Simian Mobile Disco are not out there to stun the masses with their lyrical prowess; they simply want people to dance. And that is exactly what they succeed at doing. Attack Decay Sustain Release is one of the year's best dance albums and is a masterful debut from a group that has nowhere to go but up. With Attack Decay Sustain Release, Simian Mobile Disco establish themselves as dance floor maestros and prove that all they were missing in Simian was a couple of synthesizers and a drum machine.
Wichita Recordings
