Booka Shade, The Sun & The Neon Light
Berlin’s electro-house crossover kings get even sleeker.
2006's Movements, the first album by Berlin electro-house duo Booka Shade, wormed its way into the lay listener's ear by couching its freaky noises in gliding grooves. The album warranted multiple listens to tease its secrets out, and that subtlety — this was dance music that didn't bash you over the head with how ecstatic it was — made it appeal to club-rats and non-dance-lovers alike.
If anything, The Sun & the Neon Light is even subtler, and it's not exactly surprising that it's also slicker and sleeker than the debut. But once Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier's constructs click — it took me three full listens — you begin to notice the many details they sneak in. The muffled vocals on tracks like “Control Me” and “Sweet Lies” give the songs a fluorescent-glow resemblance to, respectively, Depeche Mode and New Order at their most twinklingly robotic.
Not including the come-down “Comacabana” and self-explanatorily subtitled “You Don't Know What You Mean to Me (J's Lullaby),” the album's sequence peaks higher as it goes: “Karma Car” features a heaving, follow-the-bouncing-ball keyboard hook, while “Psychameleon” rides a lightly shuffling beat and slurping cascades of synth bass. It's the definition of a grower — the more attention you pay it, the greater the reward.
