Silicone Soul - 'Save Our Souls' (Soma) Released 25/09/06

Here with their third album release on Glasgow’s legendary Soma imprint, Silicone Soul (Craig Morrison and Graeme Reedie) have upped the ante, aiming to make a work with cultural relevance as well as glorious beats. Morrison ambitiously cites that through the album, they are very much making a call to arms to ‘Save Our Souls’ from the quagmires of immorality and our image obsessed, vacuous celebrity culture. The title aside, it’s debatable whether such lofty objectives are realised. What is clear though is that they’ve crafted a solid work, unwavering in its hypnotic, gloriously brooding quality. Oh yes, they’ve come a long way since the chart-denting commercial flirtation of ‘Right On.’

Opening with the Leftism-esque swirls and aeroplane drones of ‘Fearmakers’, you’re soon drawn into the intricate web of noise that is ‘Damascene Moments’ – chunky beats and melodious keyboards layered over deep-rooted atmospherics, a benchmark for what is to come. Interestingly, each track name is purportedly composed to reflect the nature of the song, and nowhere is this more transparent that in the stunning ‘3am’ – mesmerising grooves and keys, very much painting an image of a cityscape in the wee hours. Similarly, ‘Snake Charmer’ fuses Eastern flutes with tough beats and the fast becoming trademark, space age Silicone Soul sound. It’s transparent that this is a carefully mapped out album, gently ticking all the right buttons, rather than bombarding the listener with one-dimensional, serotonin-inducing noise.