The debut EP Touch Me by Glasgow duo Any Color Black opens with the sexy-to-the-point-of-distaste, or possibly even sin, title track. The song starts with singer Louise's orgasmic moaning and breathy gasps, which are incorporated into the backing track of the song itself when they are mixed with a digital bassline and MIDI drums. The lyrics are highly sexually charged are guaranteed to get the red-blooded male listeners' red blood rushing away from their head.
Guitarist/producer Andy combines these gritty synthesised rhythm section with overdriven electric guitars that emit a tunefully cacophonic wall of sound when the song reaches its peak.
This trend continues in the following tracks As You Are. As You Were, from which the band's name comes, and the heavy-disco If I Could, with the lyrics slipping away from raw sexual urges to a more emotive expression of a girl who wears her heart on her sleeve, punctuated all the way by crispy digital sounds and heavy bass. The overall sound is very full, with made-for-surround-sound left and right panning and some effort has been put into filling those empty frequencies when needed.
As seems to be the style for most of these songs, How You Have Fun scans like a triangle pointed upwards, with the sound building up, guitars getting louder and more full as the song goes on, until Louise's voice is screaming to be heard over the swelling backing track, and then gradually elements are removed until the song returns to the bare bones it had began with. As the song builds up, the single repeated lyric "You don't know that you're beautiful" is sung with a varnish of desperation and jealousy, allowing for a plethora of different interpretations.
The lyrical circle is completed with closer Hot, a cheeky tale of a disappointing lover with a stomping drum beat.
This terrific debut merges heavy alt rock and electro with the proverbial lack of seams, simultaneously aggressive, sensual and dancetastic. Yes, I said dancetastic.
Myke Hall
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