There’s changes of artistic direction, and then there’s Simian Mobile Disco. Go back to last year’s bloated, all-star sophomore slump Temporary Pleasure, and you’re confronted by a production team that sounded like they were squandering their indie-dance crossover cred, scraping together a pop-skewing record that tried to please everybody and disappointed half of them. So what do they do for a follow-up? An album of tech-house instrumentals based around slow builds, minimal melodies, and wide-open, between-beat negative spaces that sounds almost completely alienating outside a dancefloor context– as well as a second disc of the tracks mixed together. And every song is named after an exotic gastronomical oddity, at least one of which has made Gordon Ramsay throw up. So much for compromise.
That titular premise of Delicacies is by design: The intent was to produce songs that, like the bizarre foodstuffs they were named after, appeal only to a select few with adventurous palates. The main idea at play here seems to be the way they approach the buildup, the moment in dance music that crests to something approaching euphoria– only in this case, they replace that high with something more evocative of anxiety and dread. The longest track is a near 10-minute controlled spasm of palpitating kicks, itchy snares, rusty bass, and hissing swells; not for nothing is it titled “Nerve Salad”. Most of the album follows that uneasy path, playing up the sparseness and austerity of the drum sounds and the low end so that any appearance by a non-percussive element feels a bit like uncomfortable jolts. Not that there are a lot of non-percussive elements to start– melodic hooks, or what pass for them, splinter off into deliberate rhythmic counterpoints or beat-accenting stings more than they actually provide an easy riff to cling to.
And even if some of Delicacies starts to sound a bit samey to ears more attuned to the less minimalistic strains of house, the distinct moments have character to spare. “Hákarl”, named after the fermented shark dish that defeated Ramsay’s gag reflex, sweats out an acid-inflected strain of suspenseful, quick-stepping techno that evokes a sort of nauseous tension, especially during the jaw-clenching drone that seizes the track up at the midway point. Leadoff track “Aspic” is maybe the most immediately danceable, shuddering through a deliriously twitchy future funk reminiscent of Juan Atkins’ classic Model 500 track “Off to Battle”. And “Ortolan”, named after a bird prepared, served, and eaten bones-and-all, stirs up a dueling pair of basslines and lets a synthesized chime tone sink deep into them, congealing into a halfway-Krautrock groove that provides one of the album’s few moments of lightness.
Most of Delicacies is collected from a series of singles that debuted on SMD’s label of the same name, a sort of field-test project where they’d assemble a track with a limited, self-imposed deadline and a quick turnaround time, then drop it on club crowds to gauge the reception. That they succeeded on these terms says something about how easily they threw themselves into such an adventurous idea. And if the results aren’t necessarily the kind of up-front and accessible electro that would appeal to their “Hustler”-adoring base, it’s definitely an interesting shot at regrouping and concocting a few rapidly refined ideas.