Audio By Carbonatix
Cellos, dub shivers, disco lubrication, avant-garde detachment — sounds like a recipe for Arthur Russell’s revolutionary proto-house of the early ’80s. But it’s also a shopping list for the throbbing tones of Out Hud’s Let Us Never Speak of It Again. Sharing three members with funk-deconstructionist outfit !!!, the quintet has followed up 2003’s stunning Street Dad with a record that’s warmer and more human, even as it stretches its own elastic structure to the point of abstraction. Like post-grrl Tina Weymouths, singer/instrumentalists Molly Schnick and Phyllis Forbes dribble honey over dense equations of jutting echoes and staccato guitar. And the beats? Fucking enormous, with bass booms as heavy and syncopated as pachyderm stomps. Russell’s genius was sneaking concept and theory into throwaway dance-floor twelve-inches, synching IQs with BPMs in one seamless, symphonic flow. Similarly, Let Us Never Speak sparks your ass so that your mind will follow.
