Factory Floor – 25 25

Described by the band as both utilitarian and playful, there’s something extremely necessary to 25 25. Reduced to a duo comprising Nik Colk and Gabe Gurnsey, album #2 has an urgent focus about its personage.

Icy, claustrophobic, and hypnotic, the beats arrive refracted; cool-filtered; a continuum of sorts through which Colk’s vocal triangulations arrive in a succession of mutations; vaguely retro (and therefore hip) yet simultaneously contemporaneous (thus detached from vogue).

The momentum behind lead single Dial Me In is a case in point; a relentless six and a half minutes akin to being blasted in the face by a 60-mile-per-hour breeze while out for a feisty jog. This is rhythm to get lost in, the bass notes doing all of the legwork but also pointing to a rich and crafty subjugation of sound.

Elsewhere, modular synths wreak patterns akin to laying a trap, handclaps and fragments of vox the tripwire we call sound. The acidic slyness of opening track Meet Me At The End. The hedonistic tribalism behind Slow Listen. The playful allure of the title track. It all speaks of erudition, repetition used and abused in a dizzy concatenation. 25 25 is music as heartbeat (and screw the arrhythmia). Essential.