The Gasman - Love Collection

Bloody hell this is weird. White kicks off the album sounding like Yoko Oh No! being played backwards, or a duo of insomniac, narcoleptic church organists making hymns to debauchery and psychosis. Ricocheting off buzzing snares and breakbeat percussion, it propels itself towards a state of total abstraction. Usually this would be a good thing, but The Gasman seems to have lost focus, and too many tracks pinball between breaks, 8-bit psychedelica, garbled gabba-trance and duelling organ freakouts. Love Collection at once tries to destroy all formulas, and present a unique, coherent sound, ultimately succeeding in neither. Taken on their own, Digital Lyn or Coitus are upliftingly inane examples of laptop goofiness, but running at nearly an hour, Love Collection is a bit too much to take in. When the ludicrous, Iron Butterfly-esque organ-pomp of final track Flounce2 fades out, you find your eyes glued to the ceiling, giving thanks to whatever God is nearby that it's over. [Liam Arnold]