“Both the worlds of Binar and Andy Pickford are revealed in this Another Day in La-La-Land with psy-moods and danceable music”
1 Transcendental Space Goat 12:11 2 Another Day in La-La-Land 10:49 3 Dimanches 10:26 4 Byzantium 11:32 5 Planet Shopping 12:29 6 And the Dancing Seaweed 11:24 7 Forget the Sun 6:37 Binar Music
(DDL 75:32) (V.F.) (Unclassified EM and synth-dance music)
It's like a bottle under pressure to which we remove the cork and an avalanche of sounds represses at the neck. A shout and hoarse tremors of a shamanic kind are eventually going across, as well as a shadow of vampiric bass line as well as some sober and steady percussions. Sequences are sharply fluttering and flashing, taking tints and forms which conjugate themselves while that subtle riffs adhere now to the bass line which goes up and down like in a good rock without drums. The sonic banquet of ANOTHER DAY IN LA-LA-LAND has just been launched. And Transcendental Space Goat starts things out with a good dose of EDM and psychedelism. The rhythm is lively and entailing with stroboscopic thin lines which whip us feet. The voices, these indelible charms of the first 3 opuses of the English duet, always stay between the normality and the deformation, we even hear one goat grumbling, and they flood the rhythms with committed and outrageous comments, forcing an attentive listening which transcends the music. ANOTHER DAY IN LA-LA-LAND sends Binar back to its roots with a sonic, and musical, extravaganza which inhales the beautiful years of Project Poltergeist. Normal would you say because the music was written at the same time, either in 2006. Andy Pickford has discovered these sessions recently and had a good time mixing them and giving them a more contemporary envelope. And the result is as well unexpected than delicious with a hybrid album where the first part inhales the essences of Binar and the second one, those of Andy Pickford.
The title-track opens with a blooming of cosmic tones, another of the surprising effects of this album, before the rhythm is settling down. It's supported, like a good rock, with lively percussions and decorated with small jerky strands as well as with sequences with an organic complexion. If the rhythm and its fineries inspire the sense of hearing, the voices are more mesmerizing here with a speech which explain the warning of Binar as for the contents possibly offensive of the texts. To note the nice and very harmonious keyboard which weaves easily an earworm. Every title here is a sonic fair, a box with surprises which seduces. Both for the nature of its rhythms, all very danceable by the way, as by the color of the music and of the effects. Dimanches stays in the same cosmic themes but presents a rhythmic as lively and technoïd that of Transcendental Space Goat. The long and dying groans abound as much as the insidious charms of the multi-phases sequencing dance themes. Andy Pickford makes a remarkable work by sticking 7 lost titles which extend in a magma of sounds and voice from beyond this Earth and give an unreal color to the first 33 minutes of the album. It's really good the hear Binar again because we are entering now in the more harmonious and the more synth dance world of Andy Pickford. The bass, the melody and the very Tangerine Dream effects of Le Parc will blow your ears away with the extraterrestrial, or intra-schizophrenic, ballad that is Byzantium. We stick on the first listening on this title, as well as the very beautiful Forget the Sun, where the effects are less dominant than those vicious lines of bass and these effects of fluty layers which embroider a misanthrope melody. Both are great melodious tracks! And each track sticks together with totally opposite approaches, like the very dance and trance Planet Shopping. There also the music glitters more than the effects of voices and of the psychedelism. And it's the same thing with wild and the indomitable And the Dancing Seaweed which is really in the Andy Pickford repertoire.
From the complex kingdom of Binar to the more accessible universe of Andy Pickford, ANOTHER DAY IN LA-LA-LAND is the perfect album for who want to discover what lies behind two committed artists who refuse any compromise. And this even in a more commercial approach, like the 2nd part of this album which is decorated with 2 superb melodic jewels. And the fans of Binar, and Andy Pickford are not outdone by this album which restores us the taste to rediscover the first works of Binar and of Andy Pickford.
Sylvain Lupari (May 23rd, 2016) ****¼*
Available at Andy Pickford Bandcamp