Album: Mekon <!-- none onestar twostar fourstar fivestar -->

Something Came Up, WALL OF SOUND

Before he became one of the prime movers of the late 1980s loved-up dance movement, John "Mekon" Gosling used to be in Genesis P. Orridge's Psychic TV noise-cult, a heritage loudly apparent on this, his first album in six years. Something Came Up is stuffed with bulldozer techno beats and angry, buzzing synth riffs that whirl around and around in a dark, oppressive vortex of sound, completely drowning out the contributions of most of Mekon's vocal collaborators. All that can be heard of Bobby Gillespie and Suicide's Alan Vega on "Blood on the Moon", for instance, are the occasional squawk of "glory days" or "zero heroes", while Roxanne Shante's sped-up rap in "Yes Yes Y'all" is mangled by the single-minded, churning stomp-riff that rolls over and over with the implacable force of the Jason Nevin's remix of Run-DMC's "It's Like That". Afrika Bambaataa fares slightly better on the bounding "D-Funktional", but the collaborator who comes off best is plucky Marc Almond, who sits, "flaming, demented and delirious", astride the chunky, staccato groove of "Delirious", ranting gamely about "millennial micro-icons" as if his life depended on it. What a trouper.

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Delirious', 'D-Funktional', 'Yes Yes Y'all'