Eat Lights Become Lights
Modular Living
Release Date: Jul 16, 2013
Genre(s): Electronic, Pop/Rock, Club/Dance
Record label: Rocketgirl
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Album Review: Modular Living by Eat Lights Become Lights
Great, Based on 3 Critics
Based on rating 4
Aah, krautrock. So easy to be impressed by its driving motorik rhythms and highways to the cosmic autobahns of free thinking, with no speed limits and an endless nostalgic waving of bratwurst; but so difficult to replicate without seeming a tad flat tyred. The wheels haven’t come off the krautrock drone-mobile favoured by Eat Lights Become Lights since their 2011 debut, Autopia.
Based on rating 7/10
With krautrock and avant garde psychedelia having become fashionable all of a sudden, it's left to one of the new breed's elder statesmen to deliver an album which captures the genre's basic origins. While not exactly veterans either - Eat Lights Become Lights only put their first record out five years ago - they've firmly established themselves over that period to become arguably the UK's leading exponents of experimental, motorik-themed psych rock. The band is the brainchild of songwriter-cum-producer and arranger Neil Rudd, who created the project partly in homage to experimental artists such as Spiritualized, Can and Kraftwerk, while ultimately developing a progressive sound of his own making in the process.
Opinion: Excellent
Whilst it’s great on many levels that all things kosmische and motorik have been so widely embraced and recognised in recent years, we’re at a point now where adherent artists can’t just cruise along on the fuel of all the key references to make a real impact. For it is no longer enough to have a Cluster synth fetish, to know Tago Mago backwards and to figure-out just how Neu! locked into a rhythm. This is something that Neil Rudd has clearly realised with Modular Living, his third album as the London-birthed Eat Lights Become Lights.