Out For Blood is a fascinating prospect built out of the sonic weight that you would typically associate with rock music and the angular edges of experimental dance music. Just spin the opening track, Shrapnel, and amongst the digital detritus and shiny sonic sounds that they have gathered Magpie-like into their music melting pot, you can hear whiffs of 90’s indie and echoes of psychedelic rock and much more besides. This is dance music that is trying to be anything other than dance music. And the results are fantastic.
The title track is a down-tempo, trip-hop dirge – warped, funky and ketamine-soaked soul for the modern age – and Liquid City gets closer to more conventional funk-pop but still seems to have abrasive edges built into its grooves.
The most important realisation comes not from the individual tracks but from considering the album as a whole. From a distance, it seems recognisable; it’s funk and pop and dance. Get closer, look at the building blocks, and you realise that this is a whole new way of making music, the raw and raucous fashioned into the soulful and sublime. Music is as likely to soothe you to sleep as it is to cut you to the bone.
