Composer: Lindstrom and Christabelle
Conductor: Lindstrom and Christabelle
Label: Smalltown Supersound
Release Date: 2010-01-13
Rated: NONE
Genre: Recording
Lindstrøm is a gold-standard Norwegian producer of powerfully fuckable, interstellar tech-disco music (frequently with Prins Thomas); Christabelle is his longtime contributor, a darkly sexy, disembodied vocal force that makes Glass Candy’s Ida No sound low-voltage. Together and double-billed on an entire album for the first time, the pair has produced 10 songs, seven of them new, of alluring quasi-pop that could move from an ecstasy-fueled, dim and glittering dance floor to FM radio. Genre unmoored, it makes for one of those clever electronic-dance records — like Modeselektor’s, say — that’s transcendently slippery, reaching musically disparate ears in a similar way.
So, it’s not really fair calling the choppy opener “Looking for What” — a sultry groove sparingly overlaid with porn-flick guitar and piano — a red herring. But it drops so heavily on the irresistible big beat, bass, and handclaps on follow-up anthem “Lovesick” you’d be forgiven. A delicious party jam, the cut’s a virus waiting to happen, and if Christabelle whispered “I’m lovesick/ Can you hear its boom?” to you this way in a club, you’d lose all muscular control. “Baby Can’t Stop” was the initial single, and its six minutes is maybe the record’s heaviest retro kick, making peak-time disco love with cheesed-up synth bass, a horn section, chcka chcka chcka guitar, and Christabelle’s not-too-cool-for-you soul-star singing. Maybe they’re crossing over into some LCD Soundsystem alternate reality at times, but, even when they do, it’s a much brighter and more interesting one. — Michael Byrne
