Our guest writer, Henry Forrest, perverted by language, takes off with Flight Of Ideas…
The UK seems to have a cherished legacy of electro pop duos. From Soft Cell to Erasure; Yazoo to the Pet Shop Boys and Sleaford Mods to Disclosure. It is the dynamic of two awkward yet inspired (even incongruous) musical minds merging to create music that is dispensable but wholly indispensable. Imagine being inside the opulent residence of the Great Gatsby, without ever realising that the person serving you the cheese and pineapple sticks is your illustrious host!
Electro dance music, at its best, is and will always be the dirty undervalued sibling to the crafty and earnest dynamics of rock. The expression of mass exhilaration on the face of a regular rock concert goer is akin to a mathematical genius solving a mildly problematic sum.
Flight of Ideas is Warm Digits fourth album following on from the excellent Wireless World. The filmmaker John Waters recounted being scolded by an editor over a music review that he wrote in which he described Tom Waits as being the type of artist who never washed his underwear! With Warm Digits, Newcastle’s funky cerebral duo, not only do they not wash their underwear: they don’t wear any. Flight of Ideas is every great night out you’ve ever had or are yet to have. Sexy, slick, inventive – pulsating the senses emotionally and intellectually.
‘Feel the Panic’ benefits from the collaboration with Lancaster’s own White Stripes, The Lovely Eggs. An infectious, glorious mediative snarl on complacent thought and action whose call to action intensifies with every beat.
The hypnotic modulations of Philip Glass’s ‘Train’ provides the refrain that runs through Warm Digits ‘Replication’ which builds beautifully before petering out. There is a schizophrenic bent to the song titles that exudes a joyous sense of panic and uncertainty that jars with the assured accomplishment of the music: ‘False Positive’, ‘Everyone Nervous’ the most positive evocation is ‘I’m Ok, You’re OK’ – an electro pulse so cool and composed that Prince Andrew would use it as required listening to pass a polygraph!
‘Shake the Wheels Off’ is the anthem that ears and hearts gravitate to and is so indiscriminately funky that any ironic non dancing dancing (you know the type – think any indie nightspot) becomes obsolete, as stiff movements succumb to graceful submersion to bass lines that Bootsy Collins would deprive himself of coke to be able to create.
The best of the 80s runs through Flight of Ideas whether its Japan’s Quiet Life on ‘Frames and Cages’ or Laurie Anderson’s ’O Superman’ on ‘Everyone Nervous’ they are entry point samples that fuse the then shock-of-the-new seamlessly into the new that Warm Digits are articulating with each well-crafted note. If this is Warm Digits four albums in, God only knows what wonders a fifth record can bring.
https://warmdigits.bandcamp.com/album/flight-of-ideashttps://warmdigits.bandcamp.com/album/flight-of-ideas
Henry Forrest is an LA based counterfeiter wondering what to do with the dead cop out back. Hit the tag below to see his other articles!
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