6 / 10
Spaceships over Glasgow? If, as Mogwai claim, there really are UFOs circling over the Scottish city, it's probably got nothing to do with the city's guitar-stroking indie clique and everything to do with the promised touchdown of 'Alien Radio', the second album from grizzled dancefloor veterans Slam.
Since Stuart McMillan and Orde Meikle brought acid house kicking and screaming onto the streets of Scotland, they've been the fulcrum of Glasgow's dance scene, transplanting the metallic buzz of Detroit techno and Chicago house to packed nights at The Arches.
It's this frequency that 'Alien Radio' tunes into, and at its best, it's nothing less than spectacular. 'Lifetimes', featuring an impassioned vocal from sometime Felix Da Housecat vocalist Tyrone Palmer, melds the melancholy disco swoon of New Order to the dark, futuristic techno of Underground Resistance with aplomb, while the woozy Dot Allison-assisted ambient-electro phasing of 'Visions' proves there's more to the Slam canon than four-to-the-floor dancefloor fare.
Trouble is, there's not much more. McMillan and Meikle might be ideal party hosts, but that's all they are - hosts to a music that's been refined and endlessly redefined by the techno elite. So much so, that midway through the skittery, mechanical 'Narco Tourist', it rather feels like you're stifling a yawn during the pair's Detroit holiday slide-show.
A sterling effort, rather than a masterful display, then. Sure, the aliens got what they came for, but they left a
little disappointed.
Louis Pattison
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