Late Night Tales レコード& CD

Review: Joe Mount of lovable scuzz pop outfit Metronomy mans the latest volume in the long running Late Night Tales, a series who always seem to get the best results out of an unexpected cast of participants (Belle & Sebastien, MGMT, Trentemoeller and Midlake being recent inductees). It's hard not to get sucked in from the sugar sweet opening of Outkast's "Prototype", which is the first of several tracks that demonstrates Mount has a penchant for slow bumping R&B and outsider hip-hop with Tweet, Sa Ra and a Dr Octagon classic also appearing. A typically far reaching approach to genres applies here with the cosmic jazz of Chic Corea happily mingling with Autechre and Two Lone Swordsmen, and American synth oddities Geneva Jacuzzi and Appaloosa mingling for attention with The Alan Parsons Project and Herman Dune. The de-rigueur cover version arrives with a Metronomy rendition of Jean-Michel Jarre's "Hypnose" while Paul Morley ends the selection with a spoken word piece. This vinyl edition has 18 of the tracks spread separately across two plates as well as the mixed CD and a booklet!