Eat Static

This is noise. This is music for people scared of silence. This is music for people so used to the constant hubbub of confusion that surrounds 21st-century human at every turn that they can't switch off, not ever. So they need the noise to be sorted, segmented, given a rhythm and beat and comforting washes of naggingly familiar melody, and then repackaged and mythologized and sold back to them as "art."

The creators of In the Nude! reckon that at various points the music (a) captures the essence of viewing an exclusive Zen garden ("In the Nude!"), (b) reenacts the sumptuous wide-screen feel of Morricone and John Barry film scores ("Follow that Camel!") and (c) slinks away like a cool 60s party, lava lamp bubbling, girls go-go dancing, the lot ("Salon Kitty"). To me, it sounds like more 21st-century noise, unfiltered and irritatingly juxtaposed. The Zen garden track sounds more like one of those ubiquitous "whale call" tapes you can find in any decent aquarium, with a smug male voice irritatingly and smugly asking a colleague, "Are you willing to dance in the nude?" And guess what sex his colleague is, and whether the answer is in the affirmative?

Hmm. You must have had a sneak listen.

The opening track starts with an "interesting" motif. The sound of a scratchy retro easy-listening lounge record can be heard, before the stylus sticks and is then wrenched onto a more modern pattern. Frankly, I would have preferred to listen to the same half-second of tinkling piano for 20 minutes than be subjected to more rounded-off, scorched-smooth acid jazz grooves.

Eat Static are yet more ancient UK hippies, reared on rock, then subjected to an amazing turnabout some time around the early 90s. What disillusions most about these born-again danceheads is how retro their influences are. Bleedin' crop circles, UFOs and Jimi Hendrix, that's all the bloody lot of them experienced when young? Alongside crap punk bands like the Dickies, Discharge and the Damned. Nowhere is this better illustrated by the duo's use of a Vox Teardrop guitar on "Our Man in Nirvana," alongside the mandatory Vox Continental organ.

Still, Eat Static are clearly doing something right. In the Nude! is their eighth studio album, and they have a reputation as being one of the UK's "premier" live techno acts. Amazing what a little cultural disinformation will do.