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Review: 'EMPEROR YES'
'An Island Called Earth'   

-  Label: 'Alcopop!'
-  Genre: 'Rock' -  Release Date: '13th October 2014'

Our Rating:
OK let’s get the gripes (pet hates) out of the way before I move on to a rounded and balanced discussion of this album. I have warned you all previously that I have had enough of huge beards and geometric shapes. On top of that these guys (yes, that’s right bands like these) are now all professing some kind of undying love for Carl Sagan, whose books they are all reading. Is the space in your loft conversion just not big enough!? Is the city of New York just not big enough for you?!

I suspect you could substitute ‘reading’ for ‘watching daytime television’ but you can imagine my ‘constellation’ when I get a plethora of the above in my inbox. You will rue the day boys, you will rue the day. I myself am reading The Big Screen by David Thomson which is quite big.

Emperor Yes are kind of a supergroup, no? The album was recorded in London (by Jeremy Warmsley of Summer Camp)and mixed in NYC at the same studio used for Wu-Tang's ’36 Chambers’. They host art exhibitions inspired by the music and their videos are directed by video mega-lord Chris Boyle.

Pitchfork described a single as “like a dream where the Unicorns and Yoshimi-era Flaming Lips collaborate with Summer Camp”. If the song they are referring to is The End Of The World then I can certainly concur with The Flaming Lips comparison. This mostly comes from the singer's voice which has the register and fragility of a Wayne Coyne but is that enough to sustain this album, let alone a career?

Frankly I find the track a little shameless, so where do they go from there? Wasps is another Flaming Lips B movie. To be fair at least they have picked the technicolour widescreen version of FL, you know, the one that sold well. Cosmic Cat is my favourite track ‘cause it reminds me a bit of Madonna and you know, when pop music was sexy and everything. Musically speaking Emperor Yes are an overload of synths and splashy drums, best evinced by Cosmos. To me it sounds like a bit of a mess and it gets worse on Mirror. Monkey King is another track I like as it is altogether more simple, melodic and therefore refined.

The rest of the album kind of rolls by and it’s not completely terrible I guess but in recent years there have been umpteen bands with this eighties, keyboard heavy pop sound and plenty have been both better and more interesting than Emperor Yes. If it is alternative pop with an eighties tinge that you are looking for might I recommend two piece Hook & The Twin, or failing that The Pet Shop Boys.

It’s not so much who listens to this that I am curious about, rather it is the why? I mean it’s not like it’s even going to piss your parents off. In fact they will probably poke their head around the corner of the door frame and say, “What’s this dear, it’s quite nice”. Thereby ruining your credibility forever.                     
  author: Leo Newbiggin

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EMPEROR YES - An Island Called Earth