Filthy Dukes – Nonsense In The Dark

Filthy Dukes

This reviewer prescribes to the school of thought that music criticism should never rely too heavily on namechecking other bands when describing the sounds of a new album.

Granted, it can be a quick and easy answer to “so what are they like?”, but who wants to spend months in the studio carefully creating a collage of songs you think represent you, and that you enjoy playing, and you hope others will like, only then to hear the world’s critics explain to everyone how much it sounds like somebody else?

It is against the backdrop of this that the Filthy Dukes‘ debut long player, Nonsense In The Dark, must be appreciated. The London duo, real names Olly Dixon and Tim Lawton, are successful residents of the capital’s Fabric nightspot, where their cutting edge electro-eclecticism has earned them a solid reputation as dancefloor extraordinaires. However, they have gone about their debut with too many ideas and come out the other end with a collection of tracks all craving radio play but with no common thread. Such disparity may have paid off if the tunes themselves could hold their own, but sadly for the Dukes, most of them do sound like one of their peers, and nothing else, leaving me with no choice but to unwittingly offend them in the above maner.

‘What Happens Next’ borrows those hard guitar stabs from the slightly overrated MSTRKRFT, and come across as a poor man’s Justice. ‘Messages’ could quite easily have been one of the (many) forgottable album tracks from Caged Baby’s debut a few years ago. ‘Nonsense In The Dark’ would fit snugly on Fischerspooner’s largely ignored sophomore effort (except it has The Maccabees’ Orlando Weeks’ irritating vocal all over it). ‘You Better Stop’ is paid a compliment by sounding like it could’ve made the Chemical Brothers’ last album. ‘Somewhere at Sea’ is a quarter-decent stab at a Depeche Mode ballad. ‘Tupac Robot Club’ may have the best chance of achieving the group’s goal of hitting the charts, sounding as it does like Evil Nine on a very bad day without any weed. Strangest of all, ‘Light Skips Across the Heart’ reeks of that bizarre eighties collaboration between Giorgio Moroder and the Human League’s Phil Oakey.

Of course, sounding like other artists is no bad thing at all. To their credit, the duo have created a decently paced pop album of eighties synths and vocals, rave piano and atmospherics, and chunky breakbeats. But this was being done five years ago, and with more panache. Today, the niche the Filthy Dukes are trying to inhabit is already being majestically carved by the electro pop wholesomeness of Cut Copy and their slightly more bombastic Aussie cohorts The Presets.

By trying to sound like all of their influences, The Filthy Dukes’ own personality has gotten lost. In today’s diluted iEnvironment, maybe they should have pooled their efforts into making one stonking tune instead of stretching their talents across the increasingly outdated format of an album.

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