Silverclub – No Application EP review

Silverclub is the brainchild of Manchester’s Duncan Edward Jonesan, an outfit from Manchester, England. Silverclub play electronic music. Going down the road of LCD Soundsystem by the way of Bowie’s Berlin period and Roxy Music, I figured I’d at least give their new EP, No Application, a spin. I wasn’t disappointed.

No Application’s opening is certainly a pumping number, with a strong bass pushing the whole track forward for it’s whole three minutes fifty. It throws the EP straight in to Low and ‘Heroes’ territory, the vocals tinged with Bowie’s drawl. It’s dancy, pulsing synth and strong beat really grabs attention, and . It’s chorus is sarcastic (‘But there ain’t no application on your laptop’, perhaps a parody of people’s increasing ‘there’s an app for that’ mentality?), yet supremely catchy, the vocals couched in distortion and overlay, with the repeated line allowing for a trancey experience. This is just a great track, supremely danceable and engaging, with a great backing line of bass and sharp guitar. Goldener Reiter’s got LCD Soundsystem going for it in the opening riff. It’s sharp drum works well with the clean, middle-mixed guitar. The verse feels like it should go somewhere, building up a tension that almost becomes unbearable, and it does. The chorus is a floaty, synth-drenched affair, a glittering homage to the eighties synth-pop and electro music that grew from Kraut-rock and early experimenters in England. The lyrics are subtly underplayed in the mix, and gel well with the middle-of-the-road drive of the song ‘I never felt so lost or so down’, giving it the edge that it needed. It’s a great listen, and a good segue into the more loose and wide remixes that finish the EP.

No Application (Countach Remix) is a great re-imagining of the the title track. It’s trippy use of snatches of vocal from the original, and increased use of faux-eighties synth and a much less driving, moving beat all combine to create the most trance-heavy track on the EP. With LCD Soundsytem-esque snare and hand clap combinations, this is a great track to put on with friends or at a party. It’s danceable, but interesting enough to just listen to and appreciate. Gone (Viceroy Suite Remix) is a dub influenced, again pretty trance track with a groove that’s chilled and still engaging. Echoes of Bowie remain in the major-key synth riff that cuts in at the chorus, creating a great musical counterpoint to the bubbling, heavy bass and echoes that underline the song. It really doesn’t evolve much throughout the tune, but it really doesn’t have to. It’s got a great groove and it knows it. Gone’s a great closer, a chilled ending to what was an exciting and enjoyable EP.

This EP works. It’s always driving, and the beat is sharp and tight. The bass never stops pumping, and it’s gritty Englishness brings it firmly in to the British lexicon, as this EP draws heavily from Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy, and the electronic mastery of Brian Eno especially. All of these tracks work incredibly well together conceptually, creating a great soundscape of industrial, gritty England. This EP completely draw you in, and it certainly left me in the mood to listen again. Even the remixes, which sometimes scupper an EP and sometimes come of as lazy, were completely compelling. This EP has a great cohesion of sound, the first two tracks showcasing Silverclub’s ability to create gripping electronic music, the last two shows how their music can be used to make interesting trance and slightly dub-orientated grooves and mixes. I’d certainly look out for these guys, and I imagine they’d be brilliant live. Apparently there’s rumours going around to that effect.