VARIOUS ARTISTS

AFTER DARK 2 (Italians Do It Better)

13/20

On the first After Dark compilation, Johnny Jewel and Mike Simonetti introduced us to a batch of artists – Chromatics, Farrah, Glass Candy, Mirage, Professor Genius – who took the Italo template and swapped the cosmic hedonism of the club for the mini-melodramas of rain sodden nightdrives through the city. Coming at a time (between electroclash and the Drive soundtrack) that was bereft of synth tinkling with bored, detached female vocalists intoning over the top, it was cooly refreshing. Now the rearranged IDIB crew – which includes Appaloosa, Desire, and Twisted Wires – are back together for 15 tracks of gorgeously melancholy dance-not-dance. Chromatics do their vocodered piano-pop, uptown-sophisticate-sadsack-disco and reverb-soaked atmopsheric dreampop things, and Glass Candy stick to their weirdly sour, slightly-off sounding guns on their elegant quartet of contributions (with Warm in the Winter in particular straddling the divide between club transcendentalism and Butlins advert). However, there are misfires. Newcomer Appaloosa’s Fill the Blanks sounds like an IDIB parody, the Twisted Wires track like a baggy track remixed by Studio, and Desire’s contribution comes in the form of the cheap, lazy sadness-signifiers of Tears from Heaven. Overall the IDIB roster remains as seductive as ever, but After Dark 2 is just nowhere near as essential as its predecessor.

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Words: Josh Baines