Album review: Chase and Status, Brand New Machine (Virgin)

Not so much a new machine, more an old banger with a steam-cleaned engine: compared to Chase and Status's fizzing 2011 debut, No More Idols, this sounds creatively knackered. It starts okay, with the sinister de-tuned vocal of "Gun Metal Grey" and the ragamuffin style of "International", but "Count on Me" brings in that tired piano vamp from all those Italian house tracks, and it all deteriorates. The occasional groove is bailed out by a cute vocal sample, but if it wasn't for Nile Rodgers adding sophistication to "What Is Right?", it would be an unmitigated disaster.

Download: Gun Metal Grey; What Is Right?; Lost & Not Found