Death In Vegas - Dead Elvis

Let me get straight to the point here - this album is not what I expected at all. The only exposure to this band that I had before this album was their last single ‘Rocco’ which was enough to initiate the line of thinking that this would be a hard-edged and dark Chemical Brothers/Prodigy crossover. Imagine the surprise, then, with the opening track ‘All that glitters’. This is a laid back semi-reggae number with a gentle beat and steady guitars. Great stuff, but what about the promise of being those techno monsters with a penchant for eerie samples? Well, Death in Vegas don’t disappoint. After lulling the listener into a relaxed state Bob Marley would have been proud of, they attack right on the jugular. The next trio of tracks is kicked off by the distorted guitar-laden ‘Dirt’, peaks with the excellent ‘Rocco’ and ends up delivering the next single ‘Rekkit’. The ride through hard-edged dance gives way to a sort of spiritual tempering where the tracks, if you closed your eyes whilst listening to them, would bring up images of shimmering temples. There’s a hint of sitar overlaying some gentle bass for a while and later an insistent bass drum finds its way onto the mix. Very enlivening stuff.

The whole album is, to use a tired old cliche, a journey through sound. The tracks are quite different from each other not only in themselves but in their whole style. The desire by the band not to be pigeon-holed into dance or techno or anything else for that matter is evident and you can almost see their smiles of glee as they present you with something completely different at each turn. A brilliant debut.(8) Alo