Breton
Album: Other People's Problems
Label: FatCat
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.bretonlabs.com

Sound and vision are mutually inclusive in the world constructed by the south-of-the-river art subversives who turned musicians in order to soundtrack their visual expression. Funny thing is, with a fair wind and the passing approval of the right mainstream media, this lot cold be swept to the toppermost of the poppermost - a Massive Attack for the 21st century.

Lead single Edward the Confessor is all spiky beats and brooding menace, but it sets the urban tone for an album that reveals itself as a keenly contested face-off between confronting the art of survival and the overwhelming impulse to make commercially viable music. Wood and Plastic settles the sound into a robust indie groove that any number of identikit skinny jeans-and-Converse outfits would give limbs to have created, but Ghost Note rocks the stadium with a singalong chorus and electronic whizz-bangs. Governing Correctly invokes Hot Chip at their bewildered best, while closing track The Commission reveals the band's decision to take the whole album on holiday and mix it at Sigur Ros' studio in Reykjavik - also explaining the sense of other worldliness that lurks beneath its surface.

Think Crystal Castles meeting Foals round at Friendly Fires' place…

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk