Starkey - Open The Pod Bay Doors

Ninja Tune. Ninja Tune. Ninja Tune. There, I've said it. Here is the new disc on Ninja Tune by increasingly legendary electronic producer Starkey.  The title track 'Open the Pod Bay Doors' is a well dench slab of squeaky electro with huge thumping bass, better is track two, 'Blood Roses', a vibrant, tuneful slice of electronica with rolling piano chords, skittering beats and time stretched synths. Nice. On the flip we get - horror of horrors - a vocal. If you are unlucky I may now refer once again to my vocals and electronica theory. Ie. electronica artists rarely know how to add vocals onto tracks - usually using guest vocalists in a way that's akin to getting Matt Cardle to perform on an Aphex Twin track. This is by no means the worst example though, worse is the track develops in a way that's a little bit...um...Pendulum. The quieter bits are better - a lot of the production values are very 'now'... so will date in quite literally a few minutes. The final track could be described as very dench. The most dubsteppy of the lot with cut up stuff but nothing really approaching a memorable melody. It's well squelch though. The perfect soundtrack to a terrible teen Brit movie about some young people running away from something bad.