Simian Mobile Disco – Delicacies

As ideas for concept records go, this is one of the more curious: tour the world throwing out 12” records, gritty beats and muscular bass-lines, and while you’re at it pick up a couple of twisted cooking recipes. For many good reasons, clubbing and fine dining have rarely been comfortable bed fellows – but that hasn’t held back SMD.

Like the techno equivalent of The Hairy Bikers, the pair has named each track on Delicacies after a weird international dish, consumed – the duo would have us believe – at some point on their hedonistic tramp across the globe. It’s a relief to discover the music doesn’t leave a bad taste in the mouth, taking a harder, more techno-focused direction than previous SMD outings.

Opener Aspic (a kind of meat jelly, fact-fans) sounds like a cyborg transported back to the 1920s and forced to do the ‘flapper’ dance. Skin Cracker and Hakarl are as abrasive as the names imply, with things not lightening up until penultimate track Ortlolan (a French songbird which is eaten whole), and its psychedelic groove that conjures up echoes of the Chemical Brothers’ Exit Planet Dust. Now where’s that cooking pot? [PJ Meiklem]