Crystal Fighters - 'Star Of Love' (Zirkulo) Released: 04/10/10

What’s baffling about this debut album from Crystal Fighters is the timing of its release. Stuff this into the record boxes of all those journeyman DJs flying out to Ibiza back in April for the summer season, and all summer long, hordes of Balearic revellers will be returning home with shattered livers, a dose of the clap and a Crystal Fighters tune in their heads. ‘Star Of Love’ would have been flying off the shelves of every Tesco Extra in the country.

Instead, it’s coming out at the star of October, which means that by the time it gets into the public consciousness, winter will be setting in, and the last thing anyone will want to hear is music that reminds them just how cold and dreary a British winter can be.

Sounding like dance music made by people who have just discovered an ability to play instruments but have never heard anyone else’s music before, and so are unaware of just how unoriginal they are, ‘Star Of Love’ is essentially a DJ’s fall-back plan; a Mediterranean dance record that ticks all the right Balearic boxes so that, if your dangerously experimental mash-up of Tiffany’s ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’ beat-mixed over Daft Punk clears the dancefloor, stick on any one of these tracks and they’ll come stumbling back, arms aloft and waving their knickers at you.

Opening track ‘Solar System’, which kicks off sounding uncannily like KLF’s ‘Justified Ancients of Mumu’, is a study in the superfluousness of meaningful lyrics in dance records, including as it does the line “San Francisco/all the girls/my casiotone/daddyo/mummyo” without once detracting from its ability to smash an Ibizan dancefloor in the small hours.
Similarly, ‘Xtatic Truth’ has the sort of monotonously repeated lyric that gurning ravers love to mouth along to, regardless of the fact they’ve got no idea what the lyrics actually are, again accompanied by a dancefloor-throttling high-octane beat.

The promo describes Crystal Fighters as Basque folk ravers, the folk element of which is presumably either a nod to the fact that there is the odd whiff of a Spanish guitar melody and some distinctly Latin-sounding percussion here and there, or due to the presence of ‘Plage’, which more or less borrows the opening guitar melody from Noah And The Whale’s ‘2 Atoms in a Molecule’ and then takes you by surprise by momentarily sounding like The Thrills.

The rest of the album, however, is unashamedly Balearic electro-rave, not least on the track that everyone already knows without ever realising they knew a Crystal Fighters song, ‘I Love London’, which should probably be streamed at 80 decibels inside every West End taxi of a Saturday night - and should at the very least have made an appearance in an episode of ‘Nathan Barley’.

If partying all night long on a Mediterranean island for two weeks every summer - possibly on some potent horse tranquilisers and with no pants on – is your idea of heaven, then get yourself a copy of ‘Star Of Love’ and  invite your friends round for a glass of Lambrini and a fake tan application party. If, however, for you dance music started to sound old hat in 1993, you’re unlikely to find anything particularly revelatory here.