Craig Bratley - Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride (2014)

Stalwart label Tsuba continues its journey into eclectic musical territory with its next full length project , 'Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride', the outstanding debut LP by English dark & dirty disco champion Craig Bratley.
The 10 track album finds Bratley exploring his fine collection of analogue machines and dark wave disco visions, with beatless ambient tracks, twinkly drug chug and tobacco stained grooves all sitting next to each other in perfect harmony.

The writer Robertson Davies once said: "The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past." And he's right. Even the most forward-thinking among us will occasionally succumb to the "good-old-days" syndrome, wondering why the world be can't be as it was in some imagined halcyon youth. In any artistic endeavor, trading in nostalgia can be tricky: how can we pay tribute to the glories of bygone days, or at least our romanticized versions of them, without turning our back on what's to come? On his debut album, Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride, Craig Bratley, the English artist behind the label Magic Feet, doesn't exactly solve that problem, nor does he try. Instead, he embraces the past so enthusiastically, and so seductively, that many people will gladly follow his lead.

The record is a journey through the analog synth-pop landscapes of places like Sheffield and downtown New York, circa 1980. There's a bit of Düsseldorf and Akron, Ohio, tossed into the mix as well—the pulsing opener, "Transmission One," sounds like a collaboration between early Devo and mid-period Kraftwerk. Dare-era Human League sets the template for robo-disco tracks like "Hyper Velocity" and "Computer Controlled"—you half-expect Phil Oakey and Susanne Sulley to start trading vocal lines. "Obsession," which was previously released on Andrew Weatherall's Bird Scarer label, takes a slightly darker route into EBM. "Birdshell" (also previously released, on Instruments Of Rapture) slots somewhere between Cat Stevens' "Was Dog A Donut" and "Safety Dance," sans the annoying lyrics. "Black Swan Theory" is the best Bobby O-influenced cut I've heard in a while—pitch it up a bit, close your eyes, and just imagine yourself inhaling poppers under the biggest disco ball you've ever seen.

Not every song works quite so well. "The Curse" takes the same jackboot rhythm that makes "Obsession" so great and buries it under a fuzzed-out guitar line and a chanted refrain of "we want your soul." Sometimes the broth is spoiled by too many clichés. The monotone vocal of "Beat On Your Drum" sounds like a male response to "The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight" (though to be fair, the track's electro-funk groove is so slinky that you may not care).

The best track here is the closer, "Analogue Dreams," originally released in slightly different form on Is It Balearic? Recordings. Its bubbling acid, swooning synths and deep-tuned bass are of-this-millennium in a way that proves Bratley is more than a one-trick pony. Then again, if you're as good at your trick as Bratley is, being a one-trick pony wouldn't be so bad.

Tracklist:

01. Transmission One 2:03
02. Mannequin 4:35
03. Birdshell 7:47
04. Hyper Velocity 6:27
05. Computer Controlled 4:59
06. Beat on the Drum 6:21
07. The Curse 5:19
08. Obsession 5:33
09. Black Swan Theory 5:12
10. Analogue Dreams 8:11