Oh Lord, where art thy minimalism? Where art thy Audi A5? Where art thy recreational pharmaceuticals? It’s just a question of time and place and, putting his finger on the pulse of all that is today, is Cub\cub with his album “Radiant Crush.”
Few can swoosh between the club and the ambient as well as Cub\cub – aka Josh Hughes – does and “Radiant Crush” is all about the proving that such transitions can be made in a precisely controlled manner. Fluency is therefore the key to success and, with the precision that only computer accompaniment can provide, each of these twelve songs both achieves its unemotional purpose and seamlessly merges into the next one. I suppose it is a sign of the style of these times that these sonic concoctions of looped beats and samples can actually transcend their dancefloor origins and make it into the rather more pretentious ecosphere of headphone enhanced reality. All, however, is not cold to the touch with distractions such as Louisa Osborn’s contribution to “Drift” serving as a reminder that man is still in charge of the music machine.
Albums like this always make me think of expensive German cars. Precision engineering is core to both such automobiles and this album. You could even state, with some very reasonable degree of accuracy, that albums like this and such cars are destined for each other. Cub\cub could therefore be seen an artist who can reflect these synthetic times into music. A sign of our times and an artistic statement in one? That can’t be a bad thing.