Django Django
Marble Skies
Ribbon Music
Five years after a Mercury nominated 2012 debut album, the four-piece Edinburgh-formed avant-pop combo have hit what is traditionally supposed to be their difficult third album. Early tasters in the form of the upbeat joy of Tic Tac Toe and In Your Beat signposted a band that were far from intimidated by history, creating vibrant pop songs that embrace the language of surf, electropop and even rockabilly without ever being constrained by them.
Marble Skies drifts effortlessly into different moods, sometimes trippy, sometimes psychedelic, sometimes dancefloor, making this their most intoxicating long player. What remains in the band's DNA are big hooks and they kick off the album with one of their biggest, Marble Skies, featuring a killer chorus and an electropop synth reminiscent of early 80s era Depeche Mode.
Sundials is a blissfully jazzy beach-kissed hymn featuring a smooth clarinet part that was created with the help of the Jan Hammer, the Czech-born musician best known for his film scores for television and film including the Miami Vice Theme.
The oscillating Beam Me Up draws parallels to Depeche Mode when they discovered darker moods while Real Gone adds a twist of early Gary Numan synth into a bewitching mash.
Fountains rounds things off narcotically sounding like the results of the Beach Boys discovering mescaline.
The Djangos continue to confound the expectations of how art pop should be. Nobody else in the world currently sounds like them, or even dare try. For that reason alone the world should treasure the Djangos.
Martin Williams
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