Lists
February: 18 albums you need to hear this month
Nightmares On Wax, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Nils Frahm and more
Essaie Pas 'New Path' (DFA)
Married Montreal duo Marie Davidson and Pierre Guerineau’s last album, ‘Demain Est Une Autre Nuit’, saw them signed to DFA. While that was a classy retro synth-pop affair, their fifth finds them going deeper: they offer a dubby and hypnotic techno groove on tracks such as ‘Las Aphides’ and ‘Future Parlé’, but also experiment with sterner electro flavours on ‘Complet Brouillé’ and the psy-trance sounds of ‘Substance M’. The album is loosely conceptualised round sci-fi master Philp K Dick’s novel A Scanner Darkly, and indeed, there are hints of his twitchy, futurist paranoia to be found here. Essaie pas is French for “don’t try”, but Davidson and Guerineau don’t heed that advice: they try a new direction, and succeed. Thomas H Green
7/10
