Simian Mobile Disco - Delicacies 02

Simian Mobile Disco
Casu Marzu/1000 Year Egg
DELICACIES

The boys of Simian Mobile Disco have long inhabited a shifting and at times uneasy place in the dance music pantheon. From their awkward adoption by 2006-era nu-rave and electro through to putting out the - to my mind - almost entirely regrettable vocal pop free-for-all of last year's aptly named Temporary Pleasures, SMD have spent these past five years welding together a diverse and ever-interesting sonic brand. But across it all one has generally been left with the feeling that in James Ford and Jas Shaw’s ideal world all they'd ever really do is make slamming, relentless and, above all, dark 3 am techno. And if the first two releases on their brand new Delicacies imprint are to be believed, it seems that 2010 is to be the duo's year for indulging that particular fantasy.

Planned as a support for their Delicatessen club night project, and feeling like a deliberate antidote to the general tweeness of Temporary Pleasures, each track released on the imprint is being named after a curious, exotic and potentially lethal food from around the globe. This time the focus is on Casu Marzu, a maggot infested cheese from Sardinia, and 1000 Year Egg, a bird egg that the Chinese leave to ripen for a few months in concoction of clay, ash and lime. Delicious.

Casu Marzu is up first, rocketing along in a tightly wound but steadily building loop of menacing bass, pounding 4/4 and skittering percussion. There is also one seriously evil breakdown there in the middle. Admittedly, eight minutes is an awfully long running time for a track whose primary synth loop only runs for a single bar, but as is often the case with SMD the merit lies in the detail: the myriad analogue drips and bleeps that hover above the morass, the echoing bells in the breakdown, the extra layer of high-hats when they want to kick things up a notch. It’s not the most consistently compelling track they’ve ever produced, but I have little doubt that, played at the right time and, more importantly, to the right crowd, this could do some serious damage.

The flipside is 1000 Year Egg, a slightly more sedate yet no less mind-bending tune, that works with those oh-so-familiar SMD synth presets previously used to such grand effect in tracks like Sleep Deprivation and 10,000 Horses Can’t Be Wrong. 1000 Year Egg is no match for those outings, but as an almost mathematical investigation of how weird things can get when rhythms collapse in on themselves it makes for oddly fascinating, if claustrophobic listening. It’s the kind of track I can’t really imagine dancing to unless I’d been awake for well over 24 hours, and hadn’t seen daylight for a similar period, but if you do ever find yourself in that situation then it comes highly recommended. There’s also a drumapella version included, which is pretty much the original but a little less, shall we say, melodically complicated i.e. it doesn’t try quite so hard to make your brain evacuate through your nostrils.

All up, this is a solid, if not superlative release from the SMD boys, but it’s nonetheless one that continues them back on to the steadier ground of their techno-driven glory days. Even if the tracks are less accessible, their production skills remain resolutely top rate and hearing these sorts of jams makes me excited once more about the prospect of a straight-up techno album from them later this year.

Luke Ryan

Tracklisting: Simian Mobile Disco - Delicacies 02
1. Casu Marzu
2. 1000 Year Egg