Customer Reviews

Light & Magic

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ladytron will probably have to tolerate being saddled with the "eighties" retro tag for as long as they exist (hopefully they will exist for a very long time) but to see them as just some sort of nostalgia band is to do them a great disservice. Apart from the fact that they write excellent pop songs, they have struck on as sound as unique as, say, Stereolab with their astute use of clever electronics, passionless and unique vocal sound and lyrics that help construct their individual futuristic landscape.

They plunder the electronic heritage with a magpie-like selection of shiny objects, everything from Visage to Moroder and beyond, then add their individual touches and make the contributions of yesterday sound very new, very now and also very tomorrow.

Seventeen is an infectious and great single (and I'm thrilled it is getting consdierable airplay here in Australia, all the less air time for Avril Lavigne - someone please stop her!) but it's only the start. This album sparkles with pop hits, crazy roboticism ("Cracked LCD") and the totally luscious ("The Reason Why") and there's so much more. Listen to with their first album "604" for extended enjoyment. If you love electronica, this will be for you.

This CD takes you right back to the Eighties! It makes me wanna dig out all my old Depeche Mode CDs and put on a leather jacket with buckles and some tight jeans. I didn't know Ladytron before I came across their latest album Light&Magic, but since I got it I'm totally hooked on it.
They remind me of New Order, Depeche Mode or Kraftwerk.

I haven't heard their first album 604 yet, which so many people say is supposed to be so much better. I don't believe that. It can't be better - it might be different. I guess it's a good thing that I didn't know it. This way I didn't listen to Light&Magic with any expectations that could be destroyed.

Light&Magic is one hour of beautiful synth pop that floats through the room with nice beats and airy vocals. I especially recommend listening to Seventeen which has a nice melody and fun lyrics. Other great songs are Blue Jeans, Cease2xcist or The Reason Why. But the best way to listen to this album is to just put it in the player and not touch the skip button. It's electro pop that manages to touch your soul. At least that's what it did to me.

Ladytron consists of five members: two guys, two girls, and a room full of 1980's era drum machines and synthesizers. Electro with spoken word vocals (and occasional melodies) is perhaps the easiest way to describe their style. '604', their first album, despite some instrumental head bangers, was a fairly poppy affair. 'Light & Magic' has taken a harder approach, and that's for the better. More sound effects, harder beats, and distorted melodies add up to a stronger second effort. Don't let the first two mediocre songs fool you. "Flicking Your Switch" pairs a funky retro 4/4 beat with droning vocals and simple background chords. "Turn It On" sounds like Mantronix or even Afrika Bambaataa going crazy on a synthesizer. "Black Plastic" has the feel of the first single (if there is one), with synth strings bouncing off staccato basslines and surprisingly musical vocals. "Startup Noise" is loud, classic, end of the world techno. This album also has a more consistent feel than its predecessor. So if you like video game soundtracks, early dance music, or just the idea of hopping back in time twenty years, 'Light & Magic' is the album for you.

Ladytrons new album is stylistically very different from their debut. The warm analog synths from 604 are all but gone replaced by colder digital synths. For most of the tracks the sound seems to have shifted from 1980/81/82 UK (Human League/Kraftwerk/Visage to name a few) to post electro New York or Detroit. We're talking 1985/86/87. Unfortunately I find that most tracks are just genre exercises lacking the great hooks found in 604. Tracks 10-15 I skip entirely.

There are some exceptions. The first song "True Mathematics" is my favorite on the whole disc. Clocking in at 2:22 it's a perfect slice of sleezy Soft Cell esque pop. It brings up funny memories of the video for "What". I know it's not likely as a single but I'd love to see this fleshed out to a 12 incher.

The next song is a feeble attempt at recreating "Playgirl", right down to the monotamous lyrics and bassline. Whereas "Playgirl" literally hugged you with it's warm sound, "Seventeen" will leave you cold. Moving on to "Flicking Your Switch", the biggest shocker is what sounds like an early Acid House style bass and synthline. Amazingly, it works.

Other highlights include "Turn it On", a fine 808 driven instrumental that sounds like a lost New Order B Side. Hey, I'm a sucker for anything with that 808 cowbell. "Black Plastic" is a keeper as is "Evil" which starts out almost sounding like a Kylie Minogue song. Try singing "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" over the opening synths. "Evil" ends with over a minute of beautiful atmospheric synths, reminding me of something Beck would do. "Evil" is my other pick for a single.

I wanted to like this album even more than I liked 604 but it's just not happening for me. When this album is good, it is really good. But only one track (True Mathematics) matches the genius of "The Way The I Found You" or "Paco" or most of the brilliant pop of "604". I'd say there's about 5 really good songs on this disc, and if it was only those 5 songs on an EP I'd give it 4 stars. As a whole I'd give it 2.5 stars, but I'll be nice and give it 3.

I have to admit that I'm somewhat taken aback by all of the negative commentary this, their second album, seems to have attracted. Yes, it does sound markedly different to _604_, but I'd go against the apparent concensus that they've all but dropped the early 80s influences.

I personally was rather disappointed with the first album. There was nothing wrong with the music, but it didn't hang together particularly well - hardly surprising given how much of it had previously appeared elsewhere, and spanned several years of the group's existence. I'd long since grown tired of the likes of "Playgirl" and "Paco" by the time the album appeared, and a lot of the new material was weak and seemed like filler.

_Light & Magic_, by contrast, has a much more consistent sound. It's an album, not some singles with padding. That this isn't the sound of "Playgirl" is doubtless a contributing factor to some of the poor reviews, but given how the band's sound has varied so much in the past, it's hardly a surprise.

I'll admit there are some aspects of the album's sound that I'm not too fond of myself - the bass is muddy and too heavy in places, and it *does* sound as though they're using 1983-1984 era digital equipment (although fortunately the ghastly synth brass that was evident in so many songs back then doesn't appear).

Yes, there's evidence of Detroit and acid house in some of the tracks, but if this means less of that cheesy Hammond sound they seem to like, I'm all in favor of it. The strategic use of electric guitar in tracks like "True Mathematics" and "Fire" is also surprisingly effective.

However, there are also strong hints of both pre- and post-Vince Clarke Depeche Mode in places (try the intro to "Cracked LCD"), while "Re:Agents" finds them channeling certain aspects of early OMD, so it's not as if the synthpop aspect of the band's sound has been abandoned. Like their earlier material, it's a blend of the old and the new, it's just that the ingredients have shifted around a bit.

Negative aspects? While the average song quality is higher, and there's almost no filler (almost - "Nuhorizons" is a rehash of "Holiday 601"), there's nothing that screams "single" here. For some, that'll be disappointing, but I'll personally take a dozen above average tracks over a couple of killer tracks and a bunch of filler.

Favorite songs? Difficult to say, really, there's a lot of good material here, and I'm finding myself listening to the album right through rather than skipping around. Almost everything hits the spot for me at some point or other. "True Mathematics", "Cracked LCD" and "Re:Agents", if I absolutely had to choose.

In short, I like it. Others don't. Tastes differ, I guess.

Ladytron are four keyboard players/ composers based in Liverpool who formed in 1998, and comprise Mira Aroyo who is Bulgarian (one track, NuHorizons, is sung in her native tongue) and Helen Marnie, sharing vocal duties; Danny Hunt, responsible for programming and production; and co-founder Reuben Wu. 
It may be that a Ladytron is a make of North Korean tractor or an extinct form of winged insect, but I first came across the name as a song on the first Roxy Music album, and I suspect this band did too. They seem to have taken their inspiration not so much from the song or the sound, but from the concept of the name, at once robotic and oestrogenic. The result is twenty-first century electro-synth pop of a high order, as post-ironic cold and disembodied female voices chant against chugging Numanesque soundscapes; the missing link between Propaganda and Add N To (X). 
On this 17-track album, recorded in Liverpool and Los Angeles between 2001 and 2002, their are assisted by Michael Fitzpatrick (programming), Malibu (yet more keyboards) and Justin Meldal Johnson (electric bass).
Three of the catchiest songs have been released as singles (possibly in different versions) - Blue Jeans, Evil and Seventeen, though several others could just as well have been. Seventeen was no. 31 in the 2002 John Peel Festive Fifty, and turns up additionally as a guitar-laden remix by Soulwax on this CD. Another track, Cracked LCD, also featured on the CDS of Evil, while an earlier version of the instrumental USA Vs White Noise had appeared on their Mu-Tron EP in 2000

Ladytron's 2002 release, "Light&Magic" offers up a solid helping of 80's new wave with harder-edge 90's synth beats, and a touch of detached female vocals. I quite liked it.

This is the first album by Ladytron that I have had the pleasure of listening to. While not groundbreaking, or indeed hugely memorable, it does provide some nice new wave-style tunes to satisfy the 80's hungry music fan in all of us. The group is comprised of two men and two women. The women are the lead vocalists, and quite good at sounding rather dis-affected -- almost robot-line on a few tracks.

Two of my favorite songs are "Flicking Your Switch" and the title track "light&magic", for I feel that they have the best melodies. The overall production is good, however the vocals have a tendency to take a backseat to the music itself, at times almost being drowned-out. The album needs a few listens before it can be more fully appreciated.

"Light&Magic" is a solid, if not stellar, music release for 2002. It makes me want to listen to their previous album, "604". If it is anything like "Light&Magic", then that will be good enough.

Whether you like or hate the electroclash label it seems to attach itself to Ladytron and every other contemporary that they are paired with. Of that genre, I believe this is the best album so far, better than Ladytron's own '604', better than Fischerspooner's catchy, buzz-worthy '#1' and stronger than anything that Chicks On Speed, Adult or Peaches have churned out. Ladytron is the class of the bunch. Their sound is an updated version of 80's electro post-punk/new wave infused with a punk, so-what type of attitude without the juvenile outbursts of anger. Influences clearly lie in the vein of Depeche Mode, New Order, Kraftwerk, Visage and forth - a perfect line could be drawn to the seemingly forgotten femme electronic new wave band Book of Love... all electroclash bands ought to honor these overlooked and very good electro-femmes.

Ladytron's music sounds somewhat cold without ever feeling clinical or contrived. The vocals, sung by 2 females, tend to be flat and emotionally detached while remaining infectiously catchy and sexy. If Ladytron did a surprise club gig they could play under the name Sexy Robots (Ladytron, if you read this you can use that free of charge). The beat has been turned up from '604', enough so that you could put this in the industrial lite bucket (for those of you who still think industrial means harsh and violent, get a clue - industrial bands nowadays tend to be supercharged 80's new wave combining laser sharp synths, pounding beats and a strong sense of melody totally absent in so-called techno... the vocals aren't even distorted anymore).

The second track "Seventeen" is an obvious single with its burrow-its-way-into-your-brain chorus and pleasant rhythm; the song is an attack on modern fashion-crazy, youth-obsessed culture and its treatment of humans as disposable props. The odd thing is that Ladytron themselves are tragically fashionable, almost annoyingly hip and seem to be very happy with their fashion-for-the-moment image; this is a simple observation rather than an outright criticism. "Flicking Your Switch" is another favorite, telling the story of a woman wondering if she has betrayed her man's trust after stealing his credit card and going on a shameless, downtown shopping spree - funny and clever. "Turn It On" is a minimal, mostly instrumental song awash in ambience. The sparse "Cracked LCD" is the ultimate in robot pop, clean and distant. "Black Plastic" and "Blue Jeans" contain the closest thing to sung vocals on the album. The major single is "Evil" featuring devilish hooks and a fluid chorus. Another item of interest in "NuHorizons" sung in Mira's native Bulgarian.

`Light & Magic' is a required disc for fans of electronic music. If you are willing to stray a bit from pure electroclash, I'd suggest checking out 2 other excellent female-led electronic acts: Epsilon Minus and Android Lust... great band names too.

I stumbled upon this album and this band by complete accident. I fell in love with almost immediately. I purchased the album made a copy (as I do with all my CD's as to not damage the original) and I listen to it at least once a week.

The sound is mesmerizing, the vocals passionate yet solid, and the songs beyond catchy. I just the love the synth-pop sound. Blue Jeans, the title track Light&Magic and Cracked LCD are awesome, and Seventeen is great...of course not to discredit the other 9 tracks on the album.

I did not care for their first album 604, maybe it will grow on me. I think this album really shows growth in the bands musical exploration and invention. As I said in the title, this is definitely an accident worth having again.

I was not very moved by "604." I found the beats to be a bit too intrusive. That has been very nicely remedied by "Light & Magic." The beats are a lot more mellow and harmonic, allowing it to serve wonderfully as background. The vocals, while sounding like emotionally detached femme bots from the 80's, lay smoothly within the electronic synthesized rhythms. The repetative vocals on "Seventeen" almost sound like a part of the beat; you expect some sort of vocal layering similar to the ending measures of Linkin Park's "Crawling." I especially appreciate the variety of tracks on what could have easily been a one beat rehash album. "Turn It On" sounds like a rap beat from the early years...something Afrika Bambaataa ("Planet Rock") or Newcleus ("Jam On It")would have produced. "Evil" sounds like a Todd Terry remix of Bananarama. The title track, "Light & Magic," sounds like a club version of Enya's "The Celts," very light and airy with a brisk running pace synthesizer bassline. And "The Reason Why" is a beautifully haunting piece with layered vocals and a synth pipe organ. When I got to the "la, la, la" part, I was reminded of Kim Wilde's creepy song "Kids In America." The album as a whole is a fun, no-brainer listen. You won't be burdened by sociopolitical commentary. Perfect for a chillout session at an ultra-hip cafe - nod your head but not break your neck. You'll be tapping your toes long before you realize it. GREAT for a drive with all the windows or convertible top down...