Having spent recent times in the company of melancholia mastermind Gruff Rhys, the pair picking up a Mercury nomination under the guise of Neon Neon for the sensational Stainless Style record of 2008, Zig Zaj opener, All Hands, refines a Super Furry surreality, before the menacing, Alex Kapranos-featuring Goodbye Lovers and Friends interjects. Like Dave Gahan reinterpreting Take Me Out down in Buffalo Bar doldrums for Indieoke, it's an insistent cut of murky electropop that eventually drowns itself in a pond of woozy effects. Pele, while lacking any evident inspiration from football's most inspirational, gallivants to the tempo of The Cure's A Forest, as guitars and synths beamed in from yonks ago clatter and clank, although the ethereal balladry that trails in its wake proves all the more supernal, as Cate Le Bon's deadpan vocal delivery elevates Do As I Do to levels of eerie ingenuity. Instrumental numbers Reveal and Automation shimmer with a steely chill, the former an amalgamation of Seahawks' elastane expansibility and Kraftwerk's blustery-haired crusade down their beloved Autobahn, yet it's the futurism contained within New Order that dictates most concisely precisely which energy field the Ohio man currently inhabits: Luke Steele struts to the fore to slur lyrics of drinking copiously over apocalyptic rhythms that sound as though they're constantly caught in the blue aura of entering hyperspace, ahead of a schizophrenic guitar solo from Josh Klinghoffer . '80s-infused, big time sensuality thrives throughout Zig Zaj.
