Mrs. Dink - Diabolique (2019)

Having dedicated myself to the arguably pointless task of writing about music and the attendant construction of statements such as sounds like Pink Floyd in short trousers if Gordon Ramsey had been in the original line up, Mrs. Dink's Diabolique presented me with a dilemma, namely that I initially had no idea what to say about it beyond yeah, this is really amazing, which would seem a bit bland as reviews go. Then, just this morning, it came to me by virtue of my listening to this album immediately after giving Cabaret Voltaire's Seconds Too Late a spin; and it came to me because I can now hear what sets Diabolique apart from others of its kind. I could tell it was something special, but couldn't quite put a finger on what was different.

It's techno and an absolute banger, as the internet's Gary Goblins points out on Bandcamp; so we're talking sequencers, squelches, samples, filters, four to the floor beats, and bass that gets you right in the colon, but otherwise it feels unusually organic with sounds and melodies which come and go like absent-minded thoughts. Much like Seconds Too Late, it doesn't feel programmed and somehow gives the impression that much of what it's doing is in the bits you can't quite hear, like techno at a right angle to the sort of thing with which we're maybe more familiar; plus there's a sort of eastern feel without it necessarily being anything you can put your finger on, nothing obvious. I suppose - to follow this train of thought - it's like the point at which the machines start talking to themselves, except it turns out that they're saying something quite unlike whatever we tried to predict.

To translate the above into English, yeah, this is really amazing, you can move your arse to it, and Classy as Shit - as vocalised by the ever wonderful Peter Hope is an instant classic, although not the only one here by a long shot. The law of diminishing returns suggests that by this point of its evolution, techno probably should have devolved into a squelching noise heard on the soundtrack of trailers for televised sporting events, but instead has flowered into something which almost eludes description and which apparently lives on Jupiter. Additionally, this one is a benefit for the Lambert House, a charitable establishment providing resources for LGBTQ yoots in this age of witch hunts and angry shitheads; so Diabolique speaks well for the future of the human race in more than just one respect. We need more like Mrs. Dink.

Purchase ye this minstrelry yonder.