The Whip - X Marks Destination (Southern Fried)
5/5
By: Alex Lee Thomson
A few years ago a 12" landed on my desk that I fell in love with. It was 'Trash'; a gallant and animated dance record from an unheard of Manchester band called The Whip, and from those sonic few moments of adoration my love, or interest, for this innovatory collective was proclaimed. Cut to almost three years later and I'm at The Astoria watching said band annihilate a Simian Mobile Disco warm-up audience with a set so actively prevailing the fugitive masses from a post-indie saturation scene die in its musical embrace, contentedly addicted.
The reason is that along with acts such as SMD, The Whip are at the doors of a new dance sound, or old dance sound depending how you look at it; or indeed look at any retro-inspired revolution in the arts. The album opens on the aforementioned 'Trash' which lacks the gyrating bite of its 12" counterpart but nonetheless opens this walk down the Hacienda-beaten track with alluring contentment as the majority of this remarkably outstanding debut album does. To say the band are prejudiced by the 1980's Manchester dance rebellion is no dismissive statement, nor is it meant by any dire standards to devalue what is in effect the best homage to such a contemporary renaissance.
The vital song on this intensely enthralling release is 'Frustration' which larks heavily forward at the likes of New Order and its Factory sound, with extraordinary indications to 'Temptation'; that same sense of heavy dancefloor size, more DJ than rock, but perfectly arresting within the realm of nu-dance circa Bloc Party 'Flux' and the like. The references X Marks Destination sends out to their obvious inspirations is what gives this a quaint and approachable feel, but it's underneath all the obvious that you saunter its seditious nucleus, creeping further towards Chemical Brothers than Camden dives.
The Whip are not a dance rock band in the vein that Sunshine Underground or Foals are; i.e. bands who play rock music you can dance too. The Whip are a dance band that perform live in a rock way and on hearing the long player, its more sober efforts and leanings to the dancefloor are never mistaken for anything other than a frenzied laptop assortment, bouncing with strength and fascinating seizures of electronic arguments.
'Sirens' and 'Divebomb' are the bread-and-butter to this piece, the latter a streaming example of the album's dance over rock, and certainly indie, preference; shining an instrumentation that rivals any SMD and recalls early 90's rave culture, re-addressed with a heroically modernistic rethink. It's all about the beats; the dynamitic meeting the grunge, the seedy and the glamorous on one unremittingly stimulating piece of vinyl. This has the beats, it has the drive and it has the vocal influence to become among the best cross-over albums certainly of our modest years; a legion already notorious for the cross-over insurgency.
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