I’ve been listening to the Broadcast & The Focus Group EP, Cults Of The Radio Age, quite a bit recently. It was released on Warp, as is this 12″ by Maximo Park. Broadcast has rightly garnered almost unanimously rapturous acclaim. What this indicates is just how far the Warp label has come, because the two releases are about as far apart as you could get from each other along an axis of music with electronic production. And, unfortunately in the case of Maximo Park, it’s not always great music.
You get 4 versions of ‘Let’s Get Clinical’ for your money, plus a remix of ‘A Cloud Of Mystery’, both of which originally appeared on the album, Quicken The Heart. Two of the remixes are short and long edits of the Tom Middleton ‘Twisted’ mix – a radio edit and a ‘dub’. That’s probably a bit exotic a term to give the plodding house track with all the vocals removed bar the word ‘twisted’ which is repeated ad infinitum for nearly 8 minutes. The radio edit leaves the vocals intact, but then I found myself wishing they hadn’t been – “I’d like to map your body out/Inch by inch/North to south” is about as inane as the music. The Clark Remix is the best, a sort of slowed down rave version with distorted rave stabs, rave breakbeats and silly rave effects on the voice, but around a leisurely 115bpm. Hijacker’s Haunted House Mix puts the faux new romantic vocal strains back front and centre, but with little else to hook your ears or feet it just rolls along aimlessly. At least Martyn’s Angel Of The North Mix of ‘A Cloud Of Mystery’ has a different feel, but even it is pretty much just poor man’s dubstep-by-numbers with nothing much fresh to add.
Warp has been riding a tide of great releases over the last few months. As it does grow and spread, there’s bound to be the odd weak release. This is a forgettable blip in the catalogue.
Adrian Elmer
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