Death In Vegas: S/D C/D

Christ, somebody stop me.

well that's a given. but do they improve the DiV oeuvre at all? Their presence *really* put me off buying or even bothering to listen to Scorpio Rising. Is it really worth the cash? i'm intrigued, but not enough to shell out...yet.

Search: "Leather", a great motorik thing that turns into "Girls", an obvious Spiritualized tribute/rip-off; also pretty much all the tracks with the various female guest singers. Liam and Paul Weller are alright but hardly make the album. Destroy: "Natja" - it goes wibble wibble wibble for four minutes and doesn't really go anywhere.

It's probably fair to warn you though Charlie if you don't like the collaborations so much that only a couple of tracks are vocal-less.

Not mine. And The Contino Sessions was in my Top Ten of the year. DIV have really settled on a sound with SR, I find it just too predicatble. My favourite track is the one with Nicola Kuperus from Adult. It's a great song with a real bite to it, unlike the watercolour DIV of the Hope Sandoval tracks. Paul Weller on the other hand sounds so masculine it's urgh. Liam's not so bad but the better version is the Scientist remix on the single. What Oasis would sound like if they were a really good reggae dub-reggae band! The Adult. remix of Hands Around My Throat is also recommended.

JoB is otm as usual re Hands Around My Throat, it's a fine track I think, as good an electro record as I've heard. And yeah the Adult remix is good too.

I like Dead Elvis as a smoking a few joints with your friends album, and probably prefer it to the Contino Sessions ultimately, though I do like the latter, thought it was a particularly interesting and frankly a weird album the year it was released.

I like Scorpio Rising very much. I suspect Ronan's attitude arises mostly from the Gallagher/Weller tracks (both of which are rub), which stick out like a sore thumb. If you programme them out you get a fairly coherant fuzzy-droney-MBV-esque album.

ok. as expected. i like this a lot more than i thought i would. lowered my expectations due to the bad words here and other places.

in fact i suspect i will be listening to this more than Scorpio Rising, has more of a grower appeal.
m.e/ireallylovemusic

Perhaps I am perceiving an inconsistency because I haven't listened to "Satan's Circus" enough?

Who are the bedroom producers making music sounding exactly like this? I must hear more!

So, are they done or what? :-/

if they would have stuck with that stoned-out night driving backwards electric guitar stuff they did on Dead Elvis, I would have kept listening. I loved that CD so much. Haven't heard it in probably ten years - maybe I'll dig it out and see if it holds up.

I still listen to, and enjoy, a bit of "Dirge" occasionally.

satan's circus is stone-cold classic, start 2 finish. haters can eat a fuc.

i have cooled a fair bit on scorpio since defending it upthread (under real name no less, lol) but 'leather / girls' still ace. about half of contino sessions still works for me too.

r. fearless apparently fronting some band called black acid nowadays.

interesting, i have a (quite good) single of theirs but had no idea he was involved

Thanks for that Black Acid tip, haitch!

http://www.contactmusic.com/new/home.nsf/interview/black-acid-interview-at-leeds-festivalx01x08x08

Which brings me onto Death In Vegas. Are there any plans for another record?
Richard Fearless: I've recorded a new Death In Vegas album but it just needs to be mixed. I re-scored these psyche/surf films that were filmed at the Barbican a couple of years ago and worked on it in the studio for about 8 months. We rehearsed it and performed it a few times but as yet haven't actually released it. That's basically what the next Death In Vegas album will be. I just had to have a break from it - Death In Vegas is something I've been doing since I was a teenager.

So there are no thoughts as to when it might surface?
Richard Fearless: No. Whenever I guess?!?

'Aisha' still bangs

funny I've been relistening a lot to the 1st lp lately - Rocco and Rekkit are still pretty unfuckwithable

Still no sign of any new material then?

all answers within : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_in_Vegas

i actually wouldn't mind hearing new stuff, so long as they resisted the 'guest vocalist' excesses of old.

I can't get Dirge out of my head this morning. What a belter.

you must know Five Or Six "Another Reason" which 'Dirge' is heavily based on right?

finally tracked down the version of 'Moanin' Low' they sample on 'Rocco' a while back which was v satisfying

Thanks Blueski. That Five or Six track is amazing. I had no idea Dirge was based on another track, although (as with the best David Holmes stuff) I should have guessed.

Here's where I confess I didn't know about the Five Or Six track. Brilliant. Thanks blueski.

only discovered it on the Cherry Red comp a couple of years ago myself but figured it was more widely known

Sons of Rooooooother

(sorry. had some wine and am dancing to this track. something so melancholic yet euphoric about it)

new stuff :

http://soundcloud.com/death-in-vegas/your-loft/

i like this a lot.

The two new tracks sound great, lots of vocal processing and nice textures - looking forward to the album.
More details here: http://www.deathinvegasmusic.com/2011/07/trans-love-energies-tracklist-pre-order/

After Michael Rother, another music hero gets a track named after her (and then there's "Lightning Bolt" ;-). And "Drone Reich" - that should be a monolithic monster.

props to naming a track after Moe even after everyone found out she was a right-wing republican mentalist.

I'm looking forward to this more than I thought I would.

touring Australia with Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev and Portishead later this year, was surprised but pleased to see; makes more sense now!

though I still haven't opened the shrinkwrap on Satan's Circus, lol

more details at RA

new album is getting some good reviews.
looking forward to this.

Your Loft, My Acid is surprisingly good.

It seems I'm in the minority thinking their last one was their best. Most of it was pastiche for sure but a pretty brilliant one at that

I was genuinely impressed with the new album and I hadn't liked anything since Dead Elvis. It's hardly a mind bending idea, getting in to vintage synths but they've done a really good job of it. Some awesome tracks on it.

It's hardly a mind bending idea, getting in to vintage synths

to be fair to richard fearless, he did this before it became a 'thing' with the last album back in 2004, satans circus (i'm with baaderonixx on the love for this), which was very much based around kraftwerk/tangerine dream synths.

picked up the limited 2cd set today - loving the photography.
clearly the course richard went on in NYC did some good then.
oh, and for the first time in a long while, the guy behind the counter was enthusing about it as i was paying ..

4 tracks in, and i just know i'm going to fall under the spell of this after a few listens.

Oh, I 'bumped' into that Five or Six thread on listening to the Cherry Red singles set on Spotify, and was amazed that they had to send the lawyers round to get the credit/moneys...

The vintage synths angle is being a bit overstressed but good grief this is a boring album. Your Loft, My Acid is good but otherwise this feels like a checklist of some of the most obvious and played-out influences imaginable, and it's not executed with much imagination either.

ahh well have to agree to disagree. i have totally succumbed to its subtle charms.
love the spooked out moods of 'witch dance', and bass heavy 'lightning bolt' etc ..

it must be a slow burner because my initial listens to it did nothing for me

i like the new album. it's not particularly modern but hits a variety of moody notes well. it took until listen 2-3 for things to click, but it clicked. i like the melodramatic melancholy of "silver time machine," and the pacing of "scissors." "your loft my acid" is nice too, for sure.

that being said there's very little DiV has released that i haven't liked. i even rep for satan's circus (which i find has become one of their best albums over repeated listens).

it's interesting how DiV has become more consistent over time. i found their early albums had gems and duds alike, whereas both satan's circus and trans-love energies have been solid listens all the way through. trans-love is nice cuz it's both solid and diverse. really don't get why ppl gave up on this band.

it's interesting how DiV has become more consistent over time. i found their early albums had gems and duds alike, whereas both satan's circus and trans-love energies have been solid listens all the way through.

totally.

stopping the celeb vocalists route was when things got more interesting for me

so, the first album? ;)

I keep clicking this thread thinking it's about Dirty Vegas.

I loved the first album when it came out but hated everything else they did up until this. It's not end of year, roll the bunting out stuff but it's certainly a massive improvement in terms of ideas, grooves and production.

If you delete the Weller and Gallagher collaborations then Scorpio Rising is pretty consistent I think. Certainly higher highs than this one. With them it does feel patchy.

I presume that Fearless makes so much money off Dirge being used in every noirish action scene ever that he doesn't really care.

I always thought Fearless was/ is a better DJ than producer, and the Fabric mix I'm listening to at the moment would seem to confirm this.

I presume that Fearless makes so much money off Dirge being used in every noirish action scene ever that he doesn't really care.

I'm assuming he has to give all that money to "Five or Six" but who knows...

DiV return with more machine noise and total lack of celeb vocalists.
and for all the love of sonics/production etc that fearless talks about,
i am somewhat pissed off re there being no cd available.

https://deathinvegas.bandcamp.com/album/death-mask

This seems p interesting on first listen, still a bit like imitating their influences but way more obscure ones this time around. Never thought I'd be tuning in to a record of theirs again but so far so good.

This is fire tbh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALfgQYzTX98

I listened to it the other day! Had to check back a few times to make sure the streaming app hadn't ventured on to another artist, because several of the songs definitely strongly wear their influences

Definitely. But the sort of Luke Slater, UR etc type tracks are surprising for this artist and also very well done.

agreed

Listening to this now and liking it a lot. I know jack shit about techno, but it reminds me of Paula Temple. Who else should I be listening to?

Ronan's mention of Luke Slater and UR are pretty on point. I'll give it another listen through, but I got Kangding Ray vibes off at least one track (Hazel) and Roseville reminded of those old albums by Blondes, albeit with more staticky/distorted hi-hats kind of grunging it up on the DiV album. Maybe some Rival Consoles stuff sounds similar?

Róisín Dub(h) feels almost like a more ambient take on an early James Holden

this album is indeed cool af, supreme atmosphere. but death in vegas are a kind of a mystery to me, like in general i've never really understood what they're going for. darkness, luxury...???

I've always mentally categorised them alongside Primal Scream in the sense of always being precisely the sum of their influences.

Sometimes that really pans out like on this album which is great

Hm. Will give this a listen.

I guess there was a sense of dullness with that approach in the past when you sort of knew what the influences would be, whereas this album has a real energy to it, I suppose because you don't get people trying to copy specific parts of canonical underground techno in such a cherry-picked way, on an album.

Each track is sort of a surprise as is the whole thing really, even if we've all heard music that sounds like this.

Yep I agree with that take

yeah otm. The first two albums work bcz they’re syntheses of their various influences towards a unified sound, the new one works because it’s a collection of individual, dedicated recreations

the material released under Richard Fearless from the last few years is kind of an interim step imo

I haven't heard the new one yet, but I was listening to Dead Elvis a few weeks ago and damn that's a fun album. It felt like it held up better than a lot of similar stuff released around that time..(major label Big Beat I guess?)

A couple of weeks ago a DJ playing between sets at a local band show dropped "Dirge" out of nowhere and I have to admit, after a couple of decades away, it sounded really great.

ok, i have listened to the new album a few times.
different moods, different times of the day, and it kind of leaves me empty.
i have loved richards drift into pure machine music, and loved the last couple of albums, but this one has yet to click.

Their krautrock album was my fave. But yeah as said upthread, they were always a bit obvious about their influences

Their krautrock album was my fave.

you need to be more specific as they have gone deep down the krautrock rabbit hole.
i suspect you mean 'satans circus' ??
that didn't hold back on the source material.

Yeah that’s the one. Sorry it’s been a while I put it on. Didn’t realize it was 20 years old!?

3 months ago when the uk was experiencing a few weeks of sunshine, this album didn't work for me.
now it's cold, dark, grey, and f&cking grim, this album is totally hitting the spot.