The title From the Cradle to the Rave suggests a lifetime's worth of dance music-- a kind of connoisseurship we've come to expect from the DFA label. In the case of Marcus Lambkin aka Shit Robot, that's just the education he's enjoyed: Now 39, the Irish-born producer started DJing in Dublin in the late 1980s before moving to New York in 1992 to absorb the acid house and disco bubbling up in the city's underground clubs. There he'd eventually link up with James Murphy and have a hand in creating DFA.
Weirdly, though, this is Lambkin's debut full-length. The record features a host of high-profile collaborators-- Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor, Juan MacLean-- and is executive-produced by Murphy himself. This, in addition to Lambkin's history and pedigree, possibly gives From the Cradle to the Rave an inflated sense of promise-- it's the kind of record you almost expect to be good. But as with any debut, it's important to try to strip away some of those associations and see what's actually under the hood.
On some level Lambkin's sound is classic DFA-- sturdy dance numbers augmented with vocals-- but stylistically he's more scattered than his peers, integrating not only disco but sounds from all across the house music spectrum. He's obviously got great taste, and his production skill is immediately clear-- there's a real mastery of space in these tracks, full of sound but never overcrowded. So these are all really good instrumentals, but Lambkin struggles a bit in turning them into something more. If LCD or Hot Chip are a clean genre hybrid, then this sometimes feels like club tracks with vocals added in after the fact.
That's not always a bad thing-- occasionally you wind up with something that sounds like a cool vocal edit of an extended house jam, for instance. What usually tips the scales one way or the other here is the singer. "Take 'Em Up", for example, is steamy disco-funk, and guest vocalist Nancy Whang is a great fit-- her singing tends to be flat, but on this cut it's just the right contrast with the bouncy arrangement. The flip side is a song like "Grim Receiver", which is a killer acid-house instrumental that's ultimately spoiled by Juan MacLean's croaky talk-sing, or "I Found Love", where Lambkin lays a bizarre country-western vocal on an otherwise rad minimal-house thumper.
There's of course something appealingly raw about classically not-good singing alongside crisp electronics, and bands like the Human League and LCD have shown how that can work. But especially with disco and house, a great vocal doesn't hurt and sometimes an instrumental is enough. Not surprisingly, the best cuts here are the ones like "I Got a Feeling" and "Triumph!!!" where Lambkin's able really to sprawl out and let his synths and beats do the talking. On these, it's easy to hear the decades of dance music this guy's absorbed and appreciate how he's able to spin that into sounds that are at once reverential and future-forward. This doesn't happen on every track, but when it does, it's something special.
