After 2008's well-recieved effort Beat Pyramid - an album chock full of whirring post-punk guitars and Mark E. Smith vocal staunchness - something must have changed dramatically in the mindset of Jack Barnett, frontman and driving musical force of These New Puritans.
Opener Time Xone features nothing but woodwind instruments, and instantly causes confusion. Has there been a mistake at the CD pressing plant? Is this actually the soundtrack from an Oliver Postgate animation? When understood within the context of the album, however, it becomes clear that its purpose is to gently ease the average listener into the most bombastically avant-garde 40 minutes of their musical year.
Following track We Want War features a structure built upon repetition, constructed around a continuous riff which ceaselessly thumps away whilst other vocal and instrumental tracks are added and removed. Miraculously, TNPS manage to simultaneously fuse hip hop, Afropop, post-punk and experimental electronic music together into a coherent whole here.
Through Three Thousand, Attack Music and Orion, Hidden's conceptual nature becomes apparent, and its epic meta-narrative gradually unfolds. Standout track White Chords* comes across like a PiL or Throbbing Gristle song, and, as one of the slightly poppier numbers on offer, is definite single material.
An absolutely enthralling listen, Hidden is not simply the sound of a group aiming for NME-approved trendiness, but rather that of a band putting all of their chips on the table, going for broke, attempting to offer up their magnum opus. And it's a gamble that may well have paid off.
Whilst your mum might not enjoy it, the critics will. *Sniff* Can I smell a Mercury Prize?
Greg.
*See today's Song of the Day!
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