[Expanded review + band-induced nostalgia trip]
Variety being the spice of life, I strongly recommend the latest and third album from Ladytron, one of the most interesting and exciting bands around exploring new territory.
The women, Mira Aroyo from Bulgaria and Helen Marnie from Scotland, are the voices in a curious quartet who get put on the "electronica" shelves in the stores but work magic using much more than synthesised sound skills.
With 'Witching Hour', released a couple of weeks ago, this "Fab Four" -- Daniel Hunt and Reuben Wu come from Liverpool -- give fans what I reckon is their best yet and others put off by the very notion of "electronic music" every reason to take a fresh listen and change their minds.
 A subtle and far-ranging set of songs ventures too close in style to the romantic in classical music and the richest in pop for most people to say "my tastes stop here". Ladytron know plenty about "traditional" instruments, melody and musicianship and draw on all three for an ambitious album with great sound and a pleasing lyrical ambiguity that puts the band among the "poet-singers" who remain my primary preoccupation for a month or two.
Bewitching is the word. And beautiful. Bringing 21st-century technology to bear in making music doesn't mean forgetting how to write and sing complex love songs and a fine ballad or two: 'Beauty2' is among the warmest to come my way from such a band in ages.
"Warm" is not a word often associated with electronica, but 'Witching Hour' is full of it. I need to polish up my Romanian to make real sense of one track, 'Fighting in Built Up Areas,' but Mira's vocals are remarkable in any language. I'll be writing more of these four and their approach to the age-old conflicts in our hearts and the violent ones in our modern world some other time.
It's just too good to leave out right now, while I'm still getting into this album, since I like contrasts and often remind myself "And now for something completely different" when focussed on a particular kind of song-writing as a main theme: too much concentration on anything dulls the wits.
There's an exhilarating energy and drive to much of the album that avoids tedious percussive pitfalls. Ladytron set out by saying they wanted artistic space and have found how to use it.
"Avoidance of the generic, has been crucial all along: 'We've never been interested in being a trad. anything,' insists Mira.
'Everything is done our own way. I've always been into Krautrock bands like Neu! and Can, and I love the fact that I can't really tell what instruments they used. It doesn't really matter'," she adds in a bio piece on Ladytron's home page.
This attitude is borne out on the album. You simply can't say whether you're really hearing a guitar and even an occasional concert-hall organ with lots of stops pulled out. The band heralded such an approach in one of many interviews with musicians I digested online or in magazines during the summer.
On reading Reuben and Helen talk about the sound and the ambiguities the group was seeking to develop this time, I made a "Don't miss that when it comes" mental note.
They've done better even than hoped.
Their site discloses some other influences: one that goes unmentioned, but struck me so much it would be odd if it's not intentional. In 'Sugar', there's a recurrent use of key changes and switches in pitch that must be unforgettably laid down in the heads of anybody who remembers the distinctive spaced-out Pink Floyd sound of that band's first peak years, a very long time ago.
Such a nostalgia trip from forward-looking Ladytron was unexpected but delicious. And here's a relevant gem for oldies: a new 'Pink Floyd - London 1966 - 1967' DVD is not going to please everyone, make no mistake.
That's why it gets such a low star rating at Amazon UK. However, I've seen some of it and it's bloody marvellous! If you weren't around, forget it: other reviewers are right, it's really a historical document, but one packed with the savour and sights of the times, including Mick Jagger at his craziest and other choice interviews of the era.
There's no point in saying 'Wish You Were Here' when now we're somewhere else. I'm not one of those to say things have all gone to pot and downhill since we were lads and made no fuss pretending we never inhaled things we did. One of my life's few certainties is that there was only one James Bond, Sean Connery. After him, 007 died on screen.
I can thus tell you in advance that the new Bond movie will be absolute crap, they all are. Except for the ladies. Goodness me, if you look at pictures of what women sometimes wore and did with their hair in the Sixties and early 70s, you'll thank your lucky stars that in 2005 we've got Mira and Helen and Ladytron.
These two women keep it dark, cut it short and straight.
The same can't be said of their lyrics, not furnished with the CD and not so far on the Net. That's deliberate, I think; the 13 tracks form a stylish and stylistic sequence of mood pieces as well as separate songs. They are a bid to achieve and be enjoyed for multiple meanings.
The attempt is a total success.
8:23:27 PM link 
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