Agar Agar – The Dog and the Future
French duo Agar Agar seem to be in a perpetual state of flux on debut album The Dog and the Future, and that’s no bad thing
Agar Agar seem determined to sidestep any label placed alongside their music. The French duo – Clara Cappagli and Armand Bultheel – seem to be in a perpetual state of flux on debut album The Dog and the Future, and that’s no bad thing.
Italo-disco with a Gallic flourish, the frosted synths of opening jam Made segue into the surreal off-piste humour of Lost Dog, underpinning their technological savvy with a distinct grasp of the humane. Indeed, The Dog and the Future is a record that hurtles past barriers with a gleeful smile on its face, pitting heads down techno thumpers against gentle retro-futurist laments, all with a rich vein of surreal humour.
Sorry About the Carpet pits tropical percussion against a simple Kraftwerk-esque melody, the obstinate repetition leading to a sort of extra-dimensional take on those imperial Human League singles. Lead single Fangs Out opens in whispers, the distorted vocals offering high-pitched disruption before the upside down trap rhythms arrive to hurtle the song into a clipped, almost LCD Soundsystem navigated area.
Agar Agar stretch out into crunching proto-techno territory on Shivers, offering aural dystopia rendered with a human touch, but its finale pairing of Requiem and Schlafield fur Gestern offer the most fully realised snippets of their cinematic pop landscape. Echoes of those classic Moroder scores abound, a kind of Studio 54 glamour with a downtown feel – allowing each note to stretch out to its rightful conclusion, Agar Agar chart a wayward path, but it’s one worth persevering with.
Listen to: Made, Requiem