Lakker:
Struggle and Emerge:
R&S Records:
LP/CD/DD:
Out Now:
The Irish hardball electronica duo's last album, 2015's exemplary Tundra, was something of an epiphany for this writer. Which leaves 2016's somewhat briefer Struggle and Emerge in the unenviable position of living up to its predecessor's high standards.
It doesn't disappoint.
Despite a few production wrangles (wrong vinyl colour - it doesn't matter), Lakker's second set is as unrelenting as its forebear and then some. Lead-off download Maeslantkering Gating set the tone a while ago and not just for the extravagant title. Imagine being blasted in the eardrums by a psychopathic road-worker armed with a jackhammer, depth charges and a squash racket and you're just about there. Lakker don't do subtle - they fist-pump your cochlea like playground bullies. Then they say 'sorry' and 'there there' with downbeat pieces like the gorgeous Emergo and the ambient 5000 People before worrying your pets (and your mind) once again with the likes ofBroken Clouds. And quite what Fierljeppen is all about is anyone's guess. It could be about the end of days.
Somewhere in Iceland, Norway or Finland I'd like to think that the musical director of the next chilling psychological crime-drama series is waiting for the perfect soundtrack to accompany his/her masterpiece. He/she has found it. The bit where the lead character gets his/her arm torn off by a crowd of blood-lusting village locals armed with scythes, the chapter with kids dressed up as vampires whirling catheters around their heads, the moment when every nightmare comes true and the credits roll at the end, roughly when Open Clouds starts to sound like a choir of doom. That bit.
Lakker will never be headlining SW4 or Creamfields and thank the nuts for that. They'll be headlining the melting ice-caps in your brain, that's what.
Struggle and Emerge:
R&S Records:
LP/CD/DD:
Out Now:
It doesn't disappoint.
Despite a few production wrangles (wrong vinyl colour - it doesn't matter), Lakker's second set is as unrelenting as its forebear and then some. Lead-off download Maeslantkering Gating set the tone a while ago and not just for the extravagant title. Imagine being blasted in the eardrums by a psychopathic road-worker armed with a jackhammer, depth charges and a squash racket and you're just about there. Lakker don't do subtle - they fist-pump your cochlea like playground bullies. Then they say 'sorry' and 'there there' with downbeat pieces like the gorgeous Emergo and the ambient 5000 People before worrying your pets (and your mind) once again with the likes ofBroken Clouds. And quite what Fierljeppen is all about is anyone's guess. It could be about the end of days.
Somewhere in Iceland, Norway or Finland I'd like to think that the musical director of the next chilling psychological crime-drama series is waiting for the perfect soundtrack to accompany his/her masterpiece. He/she has found it. The bit where the lead character gets his/her arm torn off by a crowd of blood-lusting village locals armed with scythes, the chapter with kids dressed up as vampires whirling catheters around their heads, the moment when every nightmare comes true and the credits roll at the end, roughly when Open Clouds starts to sound like a choir of doom. That bit.
Lakker will never be headlining SW4 or Creamfields and thank the nuts for that. They'll be headlining the melting ice-caps in your brain, that's what.