References abound—in both reviews for the Scottish DJ Mylo’s Destroy Rock & Roll as well the publicity materials—to the seemingly straightforward four-on-the-floor bounce of the album, a straight-up no-bullshit return to album-oriented electronic dance music before sub-genres and labels turned a communal vibe into a deal-a-meal flowchart.
Ironically, the mere conceit of Destroy Rock & Roll is, in itself, just another menu selection: 17 sides of microwaved nostalgia. True enough, this is exactly what Daft Punk’s Homework was back in 1997, but they went on to whip up the remarkably filling cheese-whiz cuisine of Discovery.
What, one wonders, is the point in going back to a formula that’s already been transcended (and, with Human After All, deconstructed unto death rattles)? And if one insists on the undertaking, why leave out da funk that is the calling card of Daft’s fat-ass breakbeats? Even taking into account the fact that the first song samples Russ Meyer’s classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Destroy Rock & Roll is undeniably simple but also lacks vulgarity; it’s a headphone album that thinks it should be used to calibrate subwoofers.
To put it in perspective, a sample from Kim Carnes’s “Bette Davis Eyes” provides the album’s most central musical hook. It’s hardly surprising that some of the other samples, such as the Miami Sound Machine bit running through the hit “Doctor Pressure,” sound practically thumping in comparison. Simple beats and waves of synthesized strings don’t, in themselves, make for neo-disco euphoria. “Guilty Of Love” has little else to offer, and even in its title belies the album’s posture of suggesting dance-floor abandon, instead of actually providing it.
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