January: 18 albums you need to hear this month

PBR Streetgang 'Late Night Party' (Line Skint)

Metro Area, the New York duo of Morgan Geist and Darshan Jesrani, only released one LP, 15 years ago. Their sound – a synthesis of Detroit techno’s minimalism, Chicago house’s melodicism and NYC/Jersey attitude – crackled with slow-burn energy: uplifting and sparkling, yet made for sweaty, late-night activity of the dancing kind. They’re adjectives you’d equally ascribe to the music made by PBR Streetgang’s Bonar Bradberry and Tom Thorpe. Products of the highly productive Leeds scene, PBR Streetgang are big fans of Metro Area, it transpires. Classic house and disco tropes are the bedrock of ‘Late Night Party Line’, but it switches gears with ease.

The Metro Area influence is particularly discernible on ‘Transfunction’, with its brutal bass keys, whiplash percussion and machine-funk rhythm. The Loleatta Holloway-sampling title track is a firm nod to the vocal house tunes they were weaned on; ‘Money, Casino, Brass’, meanwhile – its title a cheeky reference to their Yorkshire roots – hauls you into a glittering, grinning riot of disco shimmer, big-room chords and machine-gun handclaps. They like a curveball, too: take ‘Everything Changes’, a not-too-distant cousin of LCD Soundystem’s‘North American Scum’. Its languid, guitar-spiked groove, pitted with cowbells and vocals from The Rapture’s Mattie Safer, takes you back to the dance-punk revolution of the early 00s. Here, PBR Streetgang prove themselves as masters of no-nonsense dancefloor devastation. From Yorkshire, with love. Stephen Worthy

8/10