Death in Vegas: The Contino Sessions (Concrete)

The second album from this suitably named collaboration is a soundtrack waiting on a movie. In a way it doesn't need pictures. The slashing guitars, pounding drums, relentless rhythms, moody keyboards, alienated vocals and fragments of melody on which The Contino Sessions is built create their own images. And in the main they are not particularly pretty; we are talking darkness, death, bitterness, betrayal - you know, the usual themes of modern life. Death In Vegas, essentially a vehicle for Richard Fearless and keyboardist Tim Holmes, enlist guests such as Jim Reid and Iggy Pop to layer their powerful, slow-building, jagged instrumentals with typically sinister lyrics and vocals. It is a strange concoction, inspired as much by metal as by dance, but one that is strangely compelling and peculiarly entertaining.

Joe Breen