Foam Island
Laced with field recordings and short interviews with young people, Darkstar\'s *Foam Island* mixes documentary techniques with electronic music to create a bittersweet portrait of the North of England. Economic inequality is the primary subtext, while the duo\'s inventive productions speak to electronic music\'s limitless expressive potential. \"Stoke the Fire\" frames political agency with hopeful house beats, \"Pin Secure\" seethes with icy desperation, and \"Go Natural\" weds falsetto R&B melodies to a minimalist blizzard of plucked strings. Summing up the mood, dissonant closer \"Days Burn Blue\" overflows with tone and feeling.
London duo serve up another helping of shiny, if bland, electro pop.
Following Darkstar's second album (and Warp debut) News from Nowhere, the dubstep-turned-electro-pop band, lost vocalist James Buttery, reverting to their original duo lineup of Aiden Whalley and James Young.
Foam Island’s jittery beats sound decidedly London influenced, but it has a sweeping, state-of-the-nation feel.
The idea behind Darkstar's Foam Island is interesting, even if it's been done before. Sandwiched between nearly every track are short one- o...
Things aren't going well in the U.K. right now, politically speaking. The right-leaning Conservative government is dismantling public services and hammering the poor, while the left is, quite simply, a powerless laughingstock.