Getting Warmer - hot debut from the future of glam electronic pop
Electronica. To those select few who understand it, it is the world. To the rest of us, it’s a complete mystery. As an introduction to the genre Camp Actor are ideal. Their first album, "Warmer", turns out to be perfectly named. The more you get into it, the better you feel about it. If intro track ‘Flower’, with its TV-theme-tune beeps and buzzes isn’t your thing (quite honestly, it takes a long time to say very little), standout track ‘Towers of London’ may well be. I don’t know if it’s the addition of vocals that adds that crucial human touch that takes electronic pop from disembodied keyboards into something altogether more complete, but whatever it is, it works for me.
From the chilled out opening tracks, ‘Your Obsession’ is a sharp shock of far brighter and bubblier proportions. Whereas before Camp Actor can roughly be compared to Bowie and Kraftwerk, this meld of brass, electronica, and indie pop would have more in common with Kylie fronting Goldfrapp. Then it’s back to Kraftwerk-esque buzzes and Roxy vocals with ‘Am I a Man?’. So, is this the future of glam rock? Very possibly. I’ll say anything to prevent admitting that I like a piece of electronica (even if it is true).
Not so keen on the promising-sounding ‘Kick Out the Kitsch’, with its harsher sounds and über-repetition (even more so than most of the tracks here). And the middle - a recording from the radio or a phonecall? - just, no. All filler and no killer here. The highlights of this album are the more original material at the start, and the eighties synth-pop moments (see the modern Duran melody that is ‘Get Hold of This!’) rather than the cold clip-shows like ‘Love and Hate Rotate’. Saying that, that particular track does have an odd twist to its tail - the addition of an orchestral melody which seemingly has nothing at all to do with the rest of the track. And it’s twists like that which make the album such a unique piece of pop. I’ll forgive the odd bits of filler and over-long songs if you will.