Canadians Jesse F. Keeler and AL-P are the people behind MSTRKRFT, AL-P is a well established studio technician, and Jesse F. Keeler
was a member of the
All in all, this is a passable disc. If you’re a Daft Punk or a Basement Jaxx fan, you’ll probably love this disc. I found
the flavor of dance music that these two guys have come up with to be a little too commercial, or too “pop”. There’s nothing
wrong with it, and if some of these tracks were slapped into a mix, I might like them better. But I really get tired of the
electronic enhanced vocals. Overall, I’d say that much of this disc sounds very clichéd to me.
Here’s what others
thought of “The Looks”:
. . . . .In fact, MSTRKRFT so religiously adheres to the disco/house production
instruction manual that the album sadly lacks an original twist that could've been scavenged from Keeler's background. Where DFA79's
hard-rock singing could have added much-needed edge, the vocoder is instead omnipresent, and while it occasionally adds cybernetic
charms to a track like "Work on You", the instrument is largely used to cover up lifeless, leering vocal melodies like "Bodywork"
and "Easy Love".
Whereas DFA79 got considerable mileage out of the tension of playing dance-based music using the weaponry of
hard rock, MSTRKRFT isn't conflicted enough to warrant more than a shrug. Keeler succeeds in meticulously reconstructing the electronic
music he clearly has a taste for, but without stirring in any of his own personality the songs do little more than run in place, joylessly
hitting the marks without changing the rules in any meaningful or attention-grabbing way. Just as a little repression can make a person's
behavior that much more interesting, so too could MSTRKRFT's sound benefit from being a bit less in touch and open with Keeler's formerly-hidden
inner desires.
MSTRKRFT are that one dude from DFA1979 and his friend DJ Cowabunga or whatever. They think
the '80's are totally radical (not to be confused with “radical politics,” my initial, erroneous first guess). But it's not their
fault. No, it's been foisted on them—subconsciously, via hypnosis—by their taste-making friends and associates, for instance those
asshole-as-viable-lifestyle-choice assholes over at Vice. (For the record, it has been scientifically proven that we will run out
of retro immediately after Flannel Redux: Winter '07.) So our “homeboys” cop every usable idea from the post-Moroder/pre-Underworld
dance, acid house, and electro canon.
Well, more like three: your requisite 808 bass pulse, your ubiquitous “Axel F” synthesizer
doodling, and your vocoders, everydamnwhere your vocoders! The Looks is like the Witness Protection Program of electronic disco, where
they put the folks for whom the normal anonymity of dance DJ's is simply not enough. Either that, or it's where Roger Troutman went
to die; it isn't your bouncy, “Believe” vocoder either, it's a flat, dessicated, pre-digital thing, so whether they're cooing about
how they're going to “work on you,” or “make you move,” or “beat the pussy up,” or whatever they're saying, it always sounds like
you programmed AppleTalk to croak lascivious things at you. Ew.
Their programming is tailored to fit, so it all sounds basically the
same—the only difference between, say, “Work on You” and “She's Good for Business” is the “riot grrrrrrrrrrrrls” trying to invent
some sort of latter-day don't-care Macarena on the latter. It's kind of a shame, since they've proven to be quite the ace remixers
of the less-is-more variety—they even managed to make that Wolfmother song more than just palatable by adding little more than hand
claps and a vocal stutter, but someone really should have told them that a full-length of just that would be pretty “boring.” Unless
of course the idea was to make a bunch of 12” mixes for segues for when DJ Gnarly-As-Fuck is conscripted to spin at their manager's
kid's Bar Mitzvah. In that case, it's pretty successful.
Over the past year the pair has crafted remixes for such
luminaries as Annie, Bloc Party, The Gossip, and Wolfmother; The Looks marks its first excursion into all-original material. Like
DFA 1979, there's not a guitar within earshot here. Nor is there any rock — this is throwback disco-house music, Chicago-style, executed
quite ably yet always with a smirk.
Handclaps and Le Tigre-sounding choruses permeate the wiggly electro-funk of "She's Good
for Business," while "Street Justice" veers from the disc's predominantly frothy, pastel-colored vibe with gritty, distorted sequences,
and a darkly proggy keyboard solo accompanying its 4/4 pulse. And like the track's recurring vocal sample claims, The Looks, more
often than not, can really kill on the dance floor.