Since 2008, autoKratz has been holding its own with such contemporaries as The Prodigy and Crystal Castles, and with its latest full release, it’s not hard to see why.
A duo from London made up of David Cox and Russell Crank, the band certainly shows its DJ roots with its extremely electronic-heavy second full-length album, “Self Help For Beginners.”
For the most part, the beats are catchy and fun on the album, and the entire thing has a dance-worthy feel to it. The duo does a good job of making listeners want to get out of their seats and move, and it’s easy to imagine its music blasting from speakers in some hip London club.
Songs like “Opposite of Love,” “Becoming the Wraith” and “R.I.S.E.” showcase autoKratz’s ability to craft cool, steady beats with a lot of upbeat electronic sounds, with some sullen-sounding vocals taking the back seat. All these elements blend together nicely.
However, the album seems to falter when the vocals attempt to do more than just fill the song out. In tracks such as “Last Light” and “Kick,” the vocals become a more prominent feature and, while some might enjoy the whispering style of singing on display in these songs, more likely than not they will just be a nuisance to an otherwise solid track.
The worst part about these tracks is that autoKratz does show that it knows how to craft a song that suits this vocal style well, especially with the songs “Their Gun” and “The Fallen.” These tracks do feature the vocals at the front, but the songs are crafted in such a way that the drums and electronic sounds give them room to flow. These well-crafted, vocal-prominent songs help showcase the potential that isn’t being fulfilled in the vocals-heavy, but not well-crafted, tracks.
Then there are some slower tracks such as “The Seventh Seal” and “My Own Black Heart,” which attempt to mix things up a bit with slower beats and more spaced-out sounds, but end up just making the listener wish that the duo stuck with the sound it had established on its earlier tracks.
The slower songs end up being a tad too dull, breaking up the rhythm of the album in a bad way.
“Self Help for Beginners” is definitely a dance album, but after about five tracks, it gets a little hard to pay attention to as all the beats start to sound the same, so it does beg for some differentiation from track to track. However, these slower tracks are not the right remedy for this problem, and they don’t sound like they fit in.
Overall, though, the album has some cool, catchy tracks on it and will probably impress fans of similar music, but will serve as little more than background noise for others.
““ Matthew Overstreet
Email Overstreet at [email protected].