4 out of 5

Label: Un Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi

Produced by: Jérémie Morin (recorded and mixed by)

Electro krauty noise from The Dictaphone – Jérémie Morin – who is getting weird at about the decade point with his solo act. That’s not background that’s needed; that is: if How To Improve Your Relaxing were your first Dicta listen, it has enough genre touches of the terms I started out with to be normal enough, but if you sift through Morin’s back catalogue, the project’s sound has been evolving, and arguably takes a more notable shift with the preceding Un Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi release, Time Flies When You’re Having Fun, and maybe we could even read into these album names versus previous releases mostly being self-titled.

It’s not background that’s needed, but it helped me put a finger on a bit of discordance I was experiencing with the album’s sound, where an array of impressively harsh but danceable beats are buffed with live instruments and megaphone vocals, with that last inclusion kinda sticking out. Or rather not sticking out, just arguably not adding anything at points, and possibly even distracting from some hard grooves. The way ‘Relaxing’ moves some pretty brutal acid-y squelches into head-bobbing krautrock, then kicks it over into a brit rock beat is a noteworthy and fun experience, especially when that mix gets kicked into overdrive via layers of extra digital noise, though without breaking from a core musicality. The vocals can be a part of this – just another layer of noise – but there are songs where it seems more like we’re supposed to be getting something out of the singing, and it causes the music to hang back. The tracks are good, there’s just a sense that we’re not getting to full potential. A tune like Amezce Kcatta splits the difference quite well, as it plays with a Bogdan Raczynski-like drawl of distorted vocals at points, but then breaks out into a really funky of noise – a great way to use the singing as a stage for something more.

Tracks are short and varied enough for less focused applications of this to not be much of an issue, but the album still nags slightly, as otherwise the music is legit: the actual promise of electro punk fulfilled without the too-cool-for-school sensibilities that often came with that scene.

As to my mention of The Dictaphone’s evolution: the vocals make more sense given that this thing seemed to start out as more of a punk / rock band, and the flat, half-shouted vocals make more sense with that kind of song structure. This style still hangs around, particularly on the bass rock of Stalemate, or Cul De Sac’s Graham Coxon swagger. But otherwise we’re in a second era of Dicta: electronic fiddlings were at the edges of past works, then seemed to become a focus with the experimental ‘When You’re Having Fun’ album, leading to a combo where digital takes the forefront on this album. Hereafter, it seems like The Dictaphone started doing some collabos with interesting, other-genred artists…

That background being outside of this listening experience, of course. It’s loud, danceable, harsh, funky, and damned interesting and enjoyable stuff.