Without doubt one of my favourite albums ever. If I've played this once I must have played it a thousand times. It's best known track 'Ain't talkin' 'bout dub' famously sampling Van Halen, reached number 7 in the UK charts and was massive throughout Europe. It also featured 'Carrera Rapida' which was used in the PS1 game, Rapid Racer.
Starting with an operatic 'Stealth Overture' it really disguised what was within the album but did give clues to its depth and craftmanship. It then kicks in with the dance/rock crossover 'Ain't Talkin...' The band have always employed two drummers, rare but not unknown in pop ,The Glitter Band and Adam and the Ants have both used them as has Nick Cave in his first Grinderman incarnation. It gives the music a really tribal feel to it and emphasises the percussion. 'Altamont Super-Highway' has a hip-hop groove tied with an electric slide guitar. The band are literally making this a road trip soundtrack.
Then we come to 'Vanishing Point'. WOW. Double WOW. This is just so perfect, so wonderful, so tight, so atmospheric, so chilled. I could quite happily loop this and listen all day. Essentially a drum and bass track but very much an ambient number. The operatic sample and keyboard interludes just tip this into the awesomeness bracket but the drop...when it comes is heavenly.
'Tears of the Gods' returns to the hip-hop/slide guitar feel with Charles Bukowski sampled along it. Very Alabama 3. That's a good thing. 'Carrera Rapida' is a jaunty little number never really straying from the glitchy drum patterns and a chorus that you'll be tapping your toes to for days after. I can't think of this tune without feeling slight nostalgia for my old Playstation. Happy days.
With a song called 'Krupa' you would expect nothing less than frenetic, jazz drumming. A great tune with the drummers being given top billing with an old style hammond organ (jazzed up) accompaniment. I trust it was done in a Krupa style. There's cowbells too!
'White Man's Throat' slows the tempo right down (ready for the next song....) and has bass and electric guitar jamming. The drumming is also subdued, the tune changing the mood to a late night jazz bar. A trumpet can just be heard as you sip your umpteenth JD and coke and reflect, in a Philip Marlowe style, on the murder case that you have but 24 hours to solve and a new partner who insists on playing by the book. Goddammit.
'Pain in Any Language' is the true masterpiece on this album. It's nasty, real nasty but the Billy Mackenzie falsetto delivery (ex of the Associates, this was his last recording before committing suicide in 1997) makes this a beautiful tune, it really is, but don't linger on the words. A full 9 minutes long that builds and builds to one of the great songs about the pain of a lost love. I could wax lyrical about this song until the cows come home. I shan't. Please listen to the song instead.
'Stealth Mass in F#m' is essentially a fuller version of the overture at the start of the song. It acts as a chillout tune after the mental battering of the previous song. A shame that it has to immediately follow as it deserves to stand high in its own right. 'Raw Power' is the kind of tune that Apollo Four Forty do best - a dance/rock crossover with a killer chorus. I understand that some releases of the album don't have this on. I pity them, I really do.
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