Dot Allison - We Are Science - C/D

The title track is a classic, all exhaustion-pipes beats, eletro-filters and icy euro delivery.
the rest is what Death In Vegas should have come up with ages ago. IMO, one of the few chill-out-ish album sustaining repeated attentive listens. While the song-writing is often only average, some of the sounds and the overall sonic textures is excellent.
The whole thing definitely relies a lot on pre-conceived ideas of 'cool', in a bleak-industrial-Berlin kinda way, but it's solid enough to live up to them.
Not essential by any means, but one of the better electronic song-y efforts of the year

I traded back a bunch of CDs recently, and this was the one I had the hardest time deciding to let go of. I gave it one last chance, listening to it in the car on the way to Amoeba. I wanted to like it, it builds up some attractively moody textures, as Fabrice says. But I guess the programming seems a bit lazy to me: once those textures are set up they don't really sustain my interest, or evolve in interesting ways, or become the foundation for a well-written song in some more conventional sense.

Plus too many tracks in the second half of the disc use this really piercing glockenspiel-ish sound that's up really high in the mix (boosted so high it even clips). If my ears are going to bleed, I want it to be for something more interesting than this.

I decided I actually liked the preceding release, Afterglow, a bit better for its superior songwriting, even though I see why folks complain it's bland. Anyway, I traded them both back and I don't miss them.

There's something missing about this album. What I really don't understand is if Keith Tenniswood produced the music, what in god's name did Dot do apart from sing a few looped vocals and strum the odd guitar? "I Think I Love You" is the only track that really stood out for me but otherwise it's pretty mediocre.