Jupiter One - 'Platform Moon'
Some things are best left in the past. The hokey 60s sci-fi ‘Lost In Space’ for example, which even by the standards of the time combined the worst elements of science fiction - cardboard sets, conservative values, chirruping robots and the possibly-paedophilic presence of Dr Zachary Smith (OK, he was kinda cool) - like black & white cheese.
Why bring this up? Well, in a misguided attempt to generate a hip aura around the group, the press release to indie-rock outfit Jupiter One’s recent single release ‘Platform Moon’ remarks that the band’s name "remain[s] cloaked in ambiguity". Actually, they named themselves in homage to the spaceship (the Jupiter 2) from the above mentioned show. Mystery solved.
It’s appropriate enough though, because ‘Platform Moon’ is vacuous space-age guff, mimicking the sound of half a dozen better bands, most prominently Talking Heads, perhaps with a touch of Joy Division, while repackaging it into the kind of innocuous swill that gets used as the soundtrack on car commercials. In fact, it has been.
As with ‘Lost In Space’, the only real use for this single is as a means of inoculating oneself against the relentless march towards blandness that it represents.