Simian Mobile Disco - 'Attack Decay Sustain Release' (Wichita) Released 18/06/07

Do labels deliberately time the release of dance records to come out just ahead of summer - the time of year when their artists’ countless appearances at Ibiza all-nighters and festival all-dayers will most translate into record sales? All of 2007’s most anticipated ‘club’ albums – those from Digitalism, The Chemical Brothers, Calvin Harris, Justice and now Simian Mobile Disco – seem to be hitting the shelves justin time to be installed on summer iPod playlists, wedged in with the hand luggage and then lost in a puddle of Sangria-pink vomit.

Not that we at Gigwise are complaining. For what we have been kindly given is a wave of electronic artists – most of whom who are only on their first album – battling it out to soundtrack if not the season itself, then certainly the nightclubs in which the nation’s youth will be spending it. And leading this rock ‘n’ rave charge, like a pair of gurning generals, are James Ford and Jas Shaw, otherwise known as Simian Mobile Disco.

Along with their kindred spirits Errol Alkan and Mstrkrft, Ford and Jas stand at the forefront of this resurgence in dance music through having firm footholds in both the house and indie camps. Ford’s work with Klaxons, The Mystery Jets and Arctic Monkeys have made him as influential a producer to the current crop as Paul Epworth was to the class of 2005, while through their own band, Simian, they inadvertently gave birth to one of the movement’s most seminal moments when ‘Never Be Alone’ fell into the hands of two unknown producers in France and re-emerged as the world’s happiest accident. Of course, ‘Attack Decay Sustain Release’ would possibly not be with us if there had been no ‘Discovery’, no ‘2ManyDJs’, no ‘Echoes’, no Bugged Out or no Fabric. Nevertheless, it arrives with the feeling that this album is the point towards which many different strands have been narrowing over the last two years. No pressure, then.

Ford and Shaw have stated their intention to create a listening experience rather than a mere collection of 12-inches on their debut studio album, and from the moment ‘Sleep Deprivation’ starts to pound ominously out of the speakers – like some kind of gothic communion between Muse and Black Strobe – we are drawn in. But next – bizarrely – comes the album’s cheesiest moment. ‘I Got This Down’ ties a corny lyrical hook to perhaps the most instantaneous riff ‘ADSR’ has to offer. The production is crisp, the tune hangs around your mind with the insistence of a holiday rep on a sales pitch but, still, it’s the album’s lowest point.