• Search
• Subscribe

Underground music fans in (North) America have always had a hard time understanding the Sigue Sigue Sputnik tradition of making music - the idea of fashion and function triumphing over form and aesthetic is simply too foreign, and formulaic to the point of obsequiousness. Call it a bias, idiosyncrasy, or even a major shortcoming the fact does remain and it comes into play in any sort of analysis from across the pond, most relevant on the debut album from We Love reviewed in these fine pages.

Rather than sully anyone's tastes or judgments let's just say the perspective from over in the Western Hemisphere is that labels like Bpitch Control appear to be following the same arc as the pop music that pollute the airwaves in the US of A - a well-oiled system of repetition, tedium, and oversaturation with each new artist joining in on Tony James' big joke with tongue planted even more firmly in cheek than the last discovery.

At Bpitch headquarters things did seem promising at the beginning of year with the release of Jahcoozi's album, still a pop group, albeit one with some balls. However, label owner Ellen Allien's album was a vomit-inducing illness of epic proportions and now We Love continues that tradition with their self-titled debut, a train wreck of a full-length.

To the duo's credit there are better tunes than most of the fare found on Allien's intelligence insulting crapfest but there is still the nauseating feeling that the concept being sold is "Buy the right clothes (ours), the right music (again, ours), do the right drugs (coming soon), have the right haircut (Allien's) and everything will be okay." This ploy, of course, is just a bill of goods that fizzled out in a poof of men's hairspray and mascara circa 1987; a set-up for mindless drones to consume more garbage for the mind.

It's also message that seems at odds with the very promise of techno music - one recently reaffirmed in this very publication by one of genre's true pioneers Jeff Mills. The future is now and why electronic acts like We Love, who are capable of tracks like "Even If" - a brilliant blending of tricky rhythmic edits and (brown) sugary sweet vocal pop that flirt with redefining the techno aesthetic - choose to churn out material so lightweight like the album's opener "Ice Lips" that even the new and improved Enrique Iglesias would find it offensive is lost somewhere in the Great Atlantic Divide. But it gets worse - "Hide Me" is a Knife rip-off - just what the world needs, one annoying pop group biting from another.

There also seems to be a huge lack of original ideas on the album starting with "Don't Cross" and "Cruise Control", both sharing the same chord progression - trading only synths for strings. "Underwater" and "No Train No Plane" share the same motif, mostly a love of Mutt Lange productions while the next two "Our Shapes" and "Escape Destination" stay in the same, opting only to pick -up the tempo just enough to make David Guetta's charts. The only other redeeming grace on the album besides "Even If" is the album's closer "White March" - a half decent stab at the Kompakt pop trance sound that sounds great in comparison to everything else to be found on this album.

Artist: We Love Title: We Love LP Label: BPitch Control Tracklist 01. Ice Lips 02. Don't Cross 03. Cruise Control 04. Hide Me 05. Even If 06. Underwater 07. No Train No Plane 08. Our Shapes 09. Escape Destination 10. White March www.bpitchcontrol.de www.myspace.com/welovewelove Our Rating: 3,5/10