Spinning round round like a record. That’s because it is a record. An old school vinyl type record but by a band of today and tomorrow going by the name of Outblinker.
I had been playing some seventies rock albums that came my way. Very nicely presented they were too with their textured gatefold sleeves and deep and meaningful cover art and, of course, two sides of the finest excesses that only the juggernaut bands of those times could pull off. Yet, on listening to Outblinker’s self-titled album, I could not help but think that their six songs could not be further from those rambling extemporisations so popular in those past times. Outblinker are instead best viewed as soldiers on a battlefield between the sequencers of today and honourable knights of percussion past and, if it were not for said percussion, it would be easy to find Outblinker guilty of being merely dancefloor murderers of the arthouse persuasion. Easy but nothing is ever that simple.
This album is propelled ever forward without diversion or pause. There is very little in the way of words to explain the song titles but, does that really matter when it is so easy to jump on the runaway Outblinker train and head straight on to the west coast main line. Always purposeful, their synthesis of old into new with only a few, almost ironic, vocoder injections easily enveloped my simple mind and, consequently, I almost needed that half time break that vinyl provides or I might have missed my station.
With the sweat wiped from my brow and a fresh cup of tea in my hand, it was time to drop the needle on side two and get back on the track. Time also to get that volume cracked right up for neighbours, trust me, are an optional extra when it comes to enjoyment of the train journey that is music. The truly manic “”Grimey” would start fight in a kebab shop and six minutes of samples, swopping synthesisers and, with no more than a pause for breath at the two thirds mark, I was drawn to consider the possibility of whether this is what the Krell would have sounded like before they were dispatched to the forbidden planet. Yes, this album is not going to stop until it either gets you somewhere or they run out of track and end up in outer space.
I am Morbius, Outblinker Are Morbius, We are all Morbius.