From the band name and album title, this sounds like it should be an electro-clash throwback to the early days of Mute Records, or other U.K. purveyors of chilly minimalist electronic music. (Drummer Daneil Mazone's haircut and makeup tips owe a lot to this era as well; she apparently took the covers of some late-period
Japan albums to the stylist with her before this photo shoot, while the two guys are happy to look like David Cross and Anton LaVey.) Well, yeah, there's a little of all that here, but not much:
S Process are mostly a scrappy little neo-new wave group with plenty of noisy guitars, abrasive keyboards, angular rhythms, and shouty vocals to go around. The results are like a mishmash of half-remembered bits from albums by
Gang of Four, early
Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the
Au Pairs, with the anxiety ratcheted up by a factor of ten so that songs like "Our Bikes Are Silver, Her Bed Is Hers" turn into tense, droning rants. It's effective for a few songs at a time, but over the course of a full 45-minute album, it simply becomes deadening. Still,
MNML is a lot better than the
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, at least. ~ Stewart Mason