Saatana – Joby Longyin (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

If you have already heard the first single from Saatana, the somewhat upbeat and energetic, kick-ass, dancefloor whirlwind that goes by the glorious name of “Chicken and Cheese with a Siding of Peas,” you might have already formed an idea that this album is all about high octane clubland ravers. Well, there is a lot of beat and euphoria to be found here, but it is a much more mercurial affair, a much more eclectic collection of songs than that first taste might suggest.

Opener “Mum and Dad” might only be a less than a minute-long snippet, but its melancholy and dulcet tones hint that what follows is not going to be something you can second-guess.

After the aforementioned food-based single has worked its mad magic, tracks like “Saatana” itself make my point perfectly, a strange and resonant instrumental that sounds like the intro music to the hottest detective TV show of the seventies. “Lost Yer Keys Rupert” is a jolly and jaunty pieces that is a mix of musak and melody, “Insomnia Revisited” is a cinematic and brooding piece of filmic majesty and “The Plutocrat’s Tree” rounds things off perfectly with a distorted and delicious take on “O Christmas Tree.” (And of course setting up a wilfully ironic balance between the idea of the influencial power of extreme wealth and the tune used as the anthem of the International Labour movement, “The Red Flag!”)

Mad, mercurial and flippin’ marvellous. Christmas comes but once a year, and when it does, it brings… an annual Christmas cracker from Joby Longyin.