Mickey Moonlight – Album Review (Ed Banger)

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Mickey Moonlight – Album Review (Ed Banger)

It’s not often that I notice a record label before an artist, but Ed Banger really is a juggernaut in the electronic music scene. Being home to some serious artist such as Justice, Mr Oizo and Breakbot, just to name a few, it’s a big name for big names. Although having lost it’s touch somewhat in the last few months, Ed Banger releases are usually to a pretty high standard, so the benchmark is high for newcomer Mickey Moonlight.

Just a bit of background on Mr Moonlight; his real name is Mike Silver, and he’s a Brit (which is always good, since I’m a Pommy too). More importantly, he’s be DJing for donkey’s years, and he’s helped produce some pretty stellar stuff in the past, not least Zongamin’s album, which is an absolute classic (if you’ve never listened to it, go out and buy it right now). So, sounding good so far isn’t it? But as we all know, what’s on paper doesn’t always mean the end result is a good one…

‘The Time Axis Manipulation Corporation’ starts as it means to end, on a floaty, chillwavey, flying in my flying car to pick up my flying drive through cheeseburger in the future kind of feeling. Trust me, that’s not as terrible as it might sound. The first track, the aptly named ‘Welcome Aboard’, is a like a lullaby wafting you into a trippy musical journey. Seriously. I know it sounds utterly bizarre but it works really well. The second track ‘Interplanetary Music’ has a really good carnival feel to it, and a truly inspiring saxophone solo. It reminded me a lot of some of the tracks on Metronomy’s recent ‘The English Riviera’, which is a really good thing. The next track, ‘This Son Is Coming Up’ continues the tropical drums and laid back feel, carrying on into ‘Pelu Tolo’. This is where things start to get interesting; ‘Close To Everything’ is definitely single material, in fact it’s being released as a single in tandem with the album. It’s simple, but a super smooth melody combined with great vocals is always a killer combo, and it’s one of the highlights of the album. Tracks 7 to 9 are kind of the transport tracks to the next catchy bit, fitting into the whole journey metaphor, and have a great fluidity. There’s a real cinematic feel to the production that I haven’t heard before and that really helps to mark the album out as something a bit special.

‘We’ll Meet Again’ is the next stop that’s worth talking about in more detail. A hip hop influenced beat, again with great vocals, make for a really sophisticated sound. The trumpet sounds work particularly well in this instance, working in a jazzy flavour. One of the more palatable tracks on the album which quickly makes sense without taking a couple of listens to ‘get it’. This is when we reach the second part of the album, which I like to refer to as ‘the bit with all the best track names’. ‘Simulation Crocodile Skin Handbag’ and ‘Diamonds in the Mind of Talula’ are the stand outs, both sharing a really awesome disco influence. I love the 8bit sound samples in ‘Diamonds’, purely because it reminds me of playing Gameboy games as a kid, but refreshingly it’s not used in a cheesy ‘chiptunes’ way. Intelligent implementation is what a lot of Mickey Moonlight production seems to be about. Things are rounded off with the epic ‘Buckaroo Banzai’, which sounds like it belongs on the Bladerunner soundtrack, and the truly inane ‘Come on Humans!‘. Bizarre, brilliant stuff.

If you haven’t realised already, this isn’t really an EDM epic bang0r fest. If you like artists such as MGMT, LCD Soundsystem and Holy Ghost! then you’ll feel right at home here. It’s quite different to anything else I’ve heard on Ed Banger, and definitely doesn’t sound as French as a pack of Gauloises rubbed in garlic and delivered in a Citroen 2CV, which pretty much everything on the label tends to (which, by no means, is a bad thing). It’s super sophisticated and incredibly well put together. It’s a very good length and very well constructed as an album, and it’s certainly one of those ones that’s more than the sum of it’s parts. It’s also super relaxing, in a similar way to LCD Soundsystem’s ’43:55′ or, funnily enough, the aforementioned Zongamin album. If this was a DFA release I wouldn’t bat an eyelid, so it’s really cool to see Ed Banger branching out a bit.

So, the verdict? If you like this sort of thing, it’s a classic, buy it, listen to it all the way through, love it. It’s one of those albums I can just tell you’ll keep coming back to years down the line, not least because it has a real artistic vision behind it. Timeless music doesn’t come around all that often.

You can stream the album in full here on Spinner.

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