3 / 10
Blame those frozen Arctic evenings if you will, but two albums in, GusGus have chosen a strange time to get nostalgic.
The techno boffins were initially famous for having bits of the Sugarcubes dissolved among them. However, as 'GusGus Vs T-World' is at pains to prove, there was always more to the band than Bjvrk's castoffs. Biggi Veira and Herb Legowitz had been recording tunes as T-World long before they met up with the others, and if you don't believe that, here are seven they prepared earlier.
Cold times they must have been, too, because with its frosty trance rhythms and minimalist melodies, 'GusGus Vs T-World' is a sparse expanse of sound. On 'Purple', featuring the sampled strains of old-time collaborator Marina Van Rooy, its impassive scowl twitches for a moment and 'Esja' provides a slightly less frigid variant upon T-World's hostile countenance, but for the remainder of the time, the expression remains defiantly dour. Having failed to recognise the fun inherent in the bleepy Detroit techno records they were at such pains to emulate, it's unsurprising that T-World brought remarkably little joy to the format.
Which only serves to make this makeweight piece of mid-career fluff look all the more pointless. '...T-World' proves that there was life before GusGus, but a life so meagre and desperate that it was barely worth living.
Fundamentally, if it wasn't worth releasing then, why bother now?
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