Crystal Fighters’ debut album, Star of Love, was always going to be a hard act to follow. Luckily, they have not disappointed, producing the more lyrically-driven Cave Rave which maintains the Basque-folk and techno blend of the first album, whilst creating its own vibrant energy. It seems the natural progression from Star of Love; a more experimental venture into the music industry, with a more refined and coherent style. With a unique blend of Basque music and contemporary dance, their sound is unusual, but full of an earthy vibrancy that the mix creates.

Crystal Fighters wrote this new album during a two month retreat in their spiritual home in the Basque hills. This influence is apparent in much of the vocalisation, and in the use of local instruments such as the txalapartas. Where their first album was personal to their experiences and full of hope and new ideas, Cave Rave reflects on more universal concepts such as spirituality, humanity and belonging, especially evident in the track ‘Separator’. Though they have come a long way in conceptual lyrics, they’ve not lost the urgency and freshness that their sound has been well-loved for. Though it does lack the experimental excitement, it makes up for this in marrying the mix of genres previously explored for a definite style. There are places where the tracks have too similar a vibe and become almost repetitive, but this is not a problem throughout — tracks such as ‘Bridge of Bones’ have an entirely new feel.

Overall, this is set to be a fantastic summer album, with bright, atmospheric tracks. They have even announced plans for an actual Basque cave rave in Pamplona to celebrate the album’s release and upcoming tour.

Whilst not as striking as their debut, Crystal Fighter’s Cave Rave has none of the traits of a difficult second album, managing to maintain a fresh energy without harking back to their previous work too much. The album, produced by Grammy nominated Justin Meldal-Johnsen, drops on 27th May. Let the rave begin.

Track to download: ‘You & I’

It’s been eight long years since the duo who pushed the boundaries of EDM last released a studio album. The scene now is not like the scene then – it has become formulaic and commercial. Random Access Memories is not formulaic, for all its inevitable commercial success. It refuses to do what we expect of a dance album – its instrumentation refuses to be tamed; its tone refuses to be consistent. The hype made me believe that this album would be defining. And after hearing it, I still do.

The variety will astound. The backbone, as always with Daft Punk, remains synth riffs, and they have produced some of the all-time greats. ‘Giorgio by Moroder’, a nod to their musical ancestors, is the only history lesson you will ever dance to. ‘Motherboard’ delves into realms of electro beyond dance. ‘Contact’ will shake you, crashing drums framed by throbbing synths, an album finale worthy of Justice’s best live work.

Nile Rodgers’ choppy guitar does not, as I thought it might, drive the album, but is instead scattered throughout the album’s funky off-beat. ‘Lose Yourself to Dance’ is a highlight for those out just to move their feet. The talent of Daft Punk is such, however, that this is not a set of songs aimed solely at dancing — ‘Within’ is a piano ballad crossed with a voice changer, ‘Beyond’ a grand symphony. ‘Instant Crush’ has it all, with Casablancas finding the vocal melody for a heartwrenching set of lyrics and a synth chorus to lift you to the stars.
But notice that I discuss these songs by style, not arrangement. It is a set of songs of stunning vision which at times feel disconnected from each other. The jarring and experimental ‘Touch’ sits between two of the liveliest dance tracks on the album for no apparent reason, for instance.

Difficulties of arrangement are perhaps the inevitable side effect of trying to compose an album as visionary as this. 70s guitars, an 80s producer, 90s voice changers, and an album to be idealised in the future.

Track to download: Things Will Change

The Oxford Revue, composed of Emily Honey, David Meredith, Will Truefitt, Alex Fox, Rachel Watkeys-Dowie and George Mather, and directed by Barney Iley, are back with a bang this week with a show at the Keble O’Reilly which promises to be their “best one ever”.

Their show with the Cambridge Footlights and Durham Revue in 2^nd Week at the Playhouse went swimmingly, with Will telling me they “yoked all the groups together in a much more coherent way” than previous shows. “A lot of that was down to Barney’s vision”. It was “tricky” because the Oxford Playhouse is geared towards everything except sketch comedy.

Their 6^th week show is “all new material, mixed in with comedy acts from around Oxford.” The first act will be a different performer every night, handpicked by the Revue from numerous auditionees. The Revue is subsidizing them to go the Edinburgh Free Fringe (“the Fringe of the Fringe”, as Iley puts it) this summer. Their aim is to “turn the O’Reilly, which is usually a very cold theatrical space, into a comedy club for a week.” The show is providing the sketch acts with an opportunity for press releases and audience reactions before they go to the Free Fringe. The Free Fringe is “really avant-garde”, with pub venues, and an ideal place for new sketch shows to test their comedy, with a view to developing more student comedy within Oxford and beyond, and valuing these independent groups’ work.

This is the Revue’s challenge – it’s “more achievable with the O’Reilly than the Playhouse; making it an evening where people sit at tables, where we serve drinks.”

Something is on the rise in student comedy – “from our perspective it definitely is”. The Oxford Revue is facilitating and nurturing comedy around the university as well as maintaining a sense of difference.

Iley says it’s “not an uncontroversial stance that the Revue takes” – this stance being that comedy needs to constantly grow and groups must feed into each other rather than being separate and competitive. “People think there’s a strange monopoly on comedy”, says Fox. The Revue’s project hopes to change this kind of thinking.

Their “deepest darkest secret” is that the material written for this show was written during a Revue getaway – they “felt privileged to be able to be in an environment where [they] could focus solely on the creative aspects of the Revue.” This is their first getaway and the Keble show will be the fruits of this week-long creative labour. Alex Fox adds “some would say we went stir-crazy and started to hate each other.” Hopefully this enmity will translate into dynamism on stage.

The Revue also promise “top-notch booze” at the Desperate Liaisons show next week. It starts at 9pm, you can have drinks with friends and “even if you’re in the middle of finals it’s not a hugely emotional weight, it’s a light-hearted show.” Fox assures me that “you can heckle as much as you like”. The table set-up at the O’Reilly opens the way for much more interactive comedy – Iley tells me they’re “trying to make the O’Reilly cosy.”

I ask them if they fit into specific stereotyped roles built up throughout the year. I am told Watkeys-Dowie generally plays the “hairy” roles, Honey plays the “surreal and terrifying” roles, but generally they are quite versatile.

The O’Reilly comedy club ‘Desperate Liaisons’ show not only promises to be hilarious, but also is the start of something new for Oxford student comedy – a collaborative effort to put original comedy shows on a new pedestal, in the university and in Edinburgh.

An infinite number of monkeys given an infinite number of typewriters would eventually be able to replicate the complete works of Shakespeare. If, however, you gave three dyspraxic gibbons fifteen minutes alone with a sheet of sugar paper and a leaky biro, they would probably produce something similar to my output in my life drawing class at the Jam Factory Arts Centre.

The visual arts are not a strong point of mine; I have been cursed from birth with eight stumpy chipolatas for fingers and only nominally prehensile thumbs. This deficiency has left me able to do little more than ineffectually lunge at the page with the precision of a toddler and the self-control of Lenny during the climactic scene in ‘Of Mice and Men’.

Nonetheless, my friend agreed to take me along to her life drawing session to see if an hour and a half crudely sketching a naked pensioner could turn me into Da Vinci. That I was not entirely in my comfort zone became obvious early on. Imagine a stereotypical French artist in his smoky garret, floppy smock spattered with oil paints and legs akimbo as he daubs a portrait of his reclining mistress in a state of dishabille. He pauses in his work, lifts up his thumb and squints momentarily. The reclining mistress of course understands that he is merely gauging the scale of the piece, and continues to recline with aplomb.  She does not, as I did, interpret the artist’s extended digit as a friendly thumbs up, and respond with two thumbs and a cheery grin of her own.

As I realised the man opposite me was not welcoming me to the group, but merely concentrating on his own charcoal sketch, I quietly lowered my thumbs and took up my pencil. Easels were available, and I had taken one, not because it would make any difference to my artwork, but because I wanted to fit in. If there had been someone there dispensing complimentary berets, laudanum and severed ears to complete the troubled artist look, I would have been first in line.

“Every man is a builder of a Temple called his body.” At least, he is according to Henry David Thoreau. To be fair to my model, for a man of advanced years, he had looked after himself well, and his body was remarkably slim and wrinkle-free. The freakishly smooth contours of his body poured from my pencil, as he posed for us with studied neutrality. He conducted himself with remarkable gravity for a man utterly devoid of underwear.

My work did improve throughout the class, as our model moved from a series of warm-up positions to three longer poses. First he straddled a chair like an extra from ‘One Foot in the Grave’ who had wandered into a Cabaret audition; secondly, he stood with one leg propped on the seat, gazing into the middle distance with the gravitas accorded only to Roman Emperors and the publicly nude; and for a finale, he curled in a foetal position on the floor, as smooth, orange and shiny as a baked bean.

The resultant drawings will not be displayed in public any time soon, for fear they might upset small children, art critics and other people of a temperamental disposition. Nonetheless, that notoriously lazy bastard Michelangelo took four years to paint the Sistine Chapel, whereas I produced three sketches in just over an hour, at least one of which is vaguely identifiable as being a picture of a human man. For me, that is achievement enough.