Along with AR Kane's 69 and I, the jewels in the crown of One Little Indian's Crossing the Pond reissue campaign are the final two albums from Disco Inferno, D.I. Go Pop and Technicolour. Ignored upon their release (presumably due to that awful bandname), the best of Disco Inferno's early 1990s work has been increasingly championed over the years and seems set to deservedly make the paperback edition of rock's history books. A deft mix of creative sampling, tender, sinewy melodies, and caustic, intelligent lyrics, Disco Inferno were one of the era's most restlessly creative bands, but drowned in the slipstream of Britpop-fueled nostalgia. At a time when Beatles worship and consensus-forming was usurping UK rock's post-Acid House surge of creativity, Disco Inferno understood that technology needn't be the enemy of guitar-rock and that songcraft and progression aren't oppositional forces.
After a few promising but unrewarding years as Joy Division clones, Disco Inferno hit upon a seemingly simple but ultimately world-opening idea: wiring their instruments through samplers. Instead of merely engaging in pop-will-eat-itself po-mo by regurgitating elements of records, film dialogue, or other media, DI engaged with the whole of the world, using their setup to trigger sounds that ranged from running water, the wind, and whistling birds to stomping boots, car crashes, and angry voices. The idea is so simple it almost seems quaint, and had they left it at that, it could have been even gauche or potentially gimmicky. Fortunately, DI frontman Ian Crause's poignant and striking lyrical sensibilities and gift for melody matched the band's unlimited sonic possibilities.
The approach was folded into DI leader Ian Crause's songs of pre-millennial tension and the results perfectly exemplified the fractious uncertainty and naïve promise of the post-Cold War world. Crause explored the gaps between history, technology and humanity in much the same way he did between art and reality, sifting through the rubble of a century of cruelty and warfare and being confronted by equal parts hope and anguish, beauty and cruelty.
The peak of DI's powers came with their series of EPs released between 1992-94-- Summer's Last Sound, A Rock to Cling To, The Last Dance, Second Language, and It's a Kid's World-- but D.I. Go Pop is nearly as urgent and key. The most challenging and least "pop" full-length in the band's catalog, D.I. Go Pop retains the arpeggios and fractured melodicism of their then-recent singles, and adds increasing layers of disorienting samples and paranoia. Like its misleading title, D.I. Go Pop is an album of contradictions: Prescient, uneasy ballads like "Even the Sea Sides Against Us" and "A Whole Wide World Ahead" recoil from the potential cruelty of human nature but are tethered by an aching off-kilter beauty. On much of the album, Crause's bitterness and aggression seems trapped in a swirl of larger sounds, his voice and fears struggling to be heard or comprehended above the dins of abstract noise and the weight of the world around him.
If Technicolour offers a far more accessible set of songs, it also makes for a less rewarding listen. Where Crause swam against the tide in D.I. Go Pop, deeply blurring his track's barest elements with his samples, the seams are much more evident on Technicolour. The title track's wall of sound approach and the punch and backbeat of "Things Move Fast" even seem to carry some echoes of (gulp) Oasis. Elsewhere, the jangle of "I'm Still in Love" shifts from windswept loneliness to the chaos of warfare, and DI even toy with elements of spybeat and disco ("Sleight of Hand") and whimsy (the single, "It's a Kid's World", which seems to re-imagine "Lust for Life" as a medley of children's television show themes). Technicolour isn't a groundbreaking record like its predecessor-- and in the band's linear history, was a disappointing step-- but it's still a charming blend of hooks and impressionistic sounds. And until someone gets around to reissuing those EPs, it's a fine second step into Disco Inferno's singular world.
