22 June 2006

MSTRKRFT - The Looks, Last Gang 2006

Honestly, I have not anticipated any other album this year other than
MSTRKRFT’s debut entitled The Looks. Jesse Keeler and Al-P teased me with
deliciously sexy remixes of Metric, Buck 65, and the Kills, leaving me as
anxious as an interstate trucker when he—or she—picks up a hot, fresh, and
inevitably cheap prostitute.

A good precursor to this album is that it is seeping with sex. Shirtless,
steamy, raunchy sex—the kind of sex you have in the back of a nightclub
against a brick wall. “Work On You” kicks off The Looks with six shots of
caffeine and an ecstasy tablet. This track paves the road for the extremely
high-energy, almost-too-intense seven tracks that follow. The group drops
the edge for a moment on the very Alan Brax-ish song “Easy Love.” This
moment of pseudo-calmness is immediately lost in an abyss of synthesizers
while a vocoder exclaims, “Baby, I’m easy.” I guess the trucker can ditch
the prostitute and can instead settle for the local bar groupie at The
Gaslight Lounge. “She’s Good For” initiates hip movement with handclaps and
a, most likely sexy, female singing over them. Synthesizers quickly move in
to create a melody that gets your neck to move along with your hips, and
shortly after a tambourine comes in to facilitate your legs to swing from
open to closed and vice-versa. Making your body convulse and rhythmically
move is all part of the product that MSTRKRFT has created. With songs like
their second single “Paris,” and “Neon Knights,” they successfully push the
boundaries between sole, electronic noise and catchy, dance hooks. The more
traditional tracks like the title track, “The Looks,” and “Bodywork” still
stand on the fence between experimental and accessible rhythm. In the title
track, the duo take samples from two different vocals and mash them together
to create a chorus that is uniquely different sounding than most
bass-thumping, cheese-ball techno songs that invade dance clubs for the
masses. With the ability to awaken dormant desires for extreme
heavy-petting—you know, the kind where your hands are sweating so much and
you rub so hard that your partner is left with “love-marks”—The Looks has
achieved a record that melds the sounds of the guilty pleasure that is dance
music with sounds to expand your forever-thirsty mind.

Daft Punk better watch the metal plating on their backs, because there are
two shiny new robots in town, and they are, to put it bluntly and incredibly
daftly, f*cking awesome.

-Diego Baptista
Music Director

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