In the Yorkshire market town of Otley, where printing presses were made until they closed the railway, the Patisserie Viennoise has a traditional double-fronted shop window with elegant Copperplate sign written boards above. Behind the luscent glass of the Dickensian display windows, there's a delirious riot of the confectioner's art – the world's imagination rendered in icing sugar and chocolate. Lilies, grooms, bridesmaids, football players, wreaths of leaves, shells, coloured pebbles, country cottages, improbable animals and psychedelic abstracts. All set on silver and white. It's dazzling and overwhelming. Even a little head-swimmingly nausea provoking - in a nearly nice way.
Pretty much like THE RUSSIAN FUTURISTS third album really. Matthew Adam Hart comes from Ontario (but it could be anywhere). He's hard on the heels of APPLES IN STEREO, FLAMING LIPS and MERCURY REV, with a little less melancholy and a much more single minded approach. THE RUSSIAN FUTURISTS is just him. He already has albums 1 and 2 into good homes and now "Our Thickness" seems ready to conquer the world.
The song "Three Seven Notes" is the addictive heart of the obsessive ten track 38 minute whole. This gallumphing tune sways giddily between a morphed descendant of "Music! Music! Music! (Put Another Nickel In)" and the erotic dreams of an audio voyeur (is there such a thing?) – all made as a Christmas Special. If it hasn’t already been all over the radio like a luxury version of that Damned Frog, it should have been. Catchy isn’t in it. Its virulently infectious.
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The rest of the album has similar ambitions, and employs the same relentless technique of piling hook upon hook, with multi tracked angelic voices pouring out the balm and honey from never ending ladels: pouring it all over a beat-laden ground floor of sumptuous extravagance. Although one song follows another with a fresh set of Teflon defying tunes, the illusion is of one never-ending flow of shifting colour and sensation. The gilded lilies are sugar frosted, then drizzled with chocolate powder (80%) and decorated with peach blossom, then melted into blue porpoises and ocean waves. "Hi there! Wow!" intones a fantasy female in "Still Life", giving way imperceptibly to yet another unstoppable tune: "Hurtin' for Certain"
This is a bit incoherent. I know. It isn’t deliberate. But the music makes me dizzy, and, dear reader, I think you ought to have some of it too. If you generally go for the sorbet, but long for the Peach Melba … maybe you should smuggle a copy of "Our Thickness" home for your tea? It is a work of art. You could get addicted. But even if you escape, the occasional spin will set your head reeling all over again.
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