(Chicks On Speed Records/Creative Vibes)

The back cover sleeve artwork for ‘Go Pets Go’ offers a particularly apt metaphor for the sonic contents of this album – it pictures a man-sized Barney The Dinosaur-style character lying prone in the strewn aftermath of a fast food and candy binge, wrapping and fries lying around his furry limbs in a wide arc. It certainly captures the naive playful tone of many of the hyper-unpredictable tracks included within, as well as the dreamlike toy-strewn sounds processed with a meticulous level of attention to detail.

French trio DAT Politics hail from the Northern city of Lille, and originally emerged as a five-piece back in 1998, releasing their debut album ‘Villiger’ through Cologne-based label A-Musik and Fat Cat Records in the UK. Over the course of their ensuing records ‘Sous Hit’ and ‘Tracto Flirt’ they began to introduce more overt pop elements into their glitchy unpredictable electronics – a direction that was more fully explored on their most recent album ‘Plugs Plus’ (also released through Chicks On Speed). ‘Go Pets Go’ is DAT Politics’ fifth full-length album in just six years, and directly builds upon the pop explorations of ‘Plugs Plus’, while also featuring guest appearances from Tigerbeat6 artist Nathan Michel and Kristen Erickson (aka Kevin Blechdom).

Opening track ‘Go Pets Go’ offers a pretty good taste of what’s in store for this album – sugar-sweet and almost naively playful sung vocals from Nathan Michel mask an incredible level of digital trickery going on just below the surface – the sorts of timestretched jerky rhythms that you’d expect from the likes of Funkstorung and Kid 606 cutting and slicing around stabs of warm brass, mangled studio chatter and sampled pet meows and growls. ‘This Way’ bounces along on punching house beats, crushed-up DSP effects buzzing alongside a distorted synth line and sped-up Chipmunk vocals, while even finding space for a heavily processed guitar solo in there, leading into ‘No Fairytale’, which features Kristen Erickson on guest vocals, tinkling piano and banjo giving way to some sped-up and stuttering sweet pop vocals riding a drill-and-bass beat that drops into a fabulous half-speed hip hop chorus; “This is not a fairytale.”

‘Cat Polk’ places delicate slow guitar chords inside a buzzing framework of harsh lo-bit synth tones and clicking beats, while also layering in some lush strings that counterpoint the insane close-to-overload synth squeals perfectly, relaxing into slow calm as it leads into segue track ‘Trick’, which pushes a vocal repeated saying what sounds like ‘is it a trick or is it a drug’ through a sonic mincer of digital contortion and processing, steel-hard glitch-hop bass crashes echoing back and forth. ‘Clever Shark’meanwhile throws in some punky riffs worthy of Chicks On Speed down over hard stomping beats that take a sharp left turn down into twinkling harmonised vocal territory before slamming back into crazed rocking breakbeats and digitally-timestretched yells. ‘Up Up Down OK!’ wriggles with a slight hip-hop swagger and even throws in some furious retro acid squiggles amongst its dense hard-core infused jacking beats and contorted pop vocals, before ‘Yha Hoo Tuning’ takes things into a hilarious piss-take of hardcore that’s one of the standout moments on this disc – deliberately over-the-top sampled yells bellowing out over a sinuous backing of crisp beats and arpeggiated synths that go through an insane drill-and-bass Kid 606-esque rinseout right at the end.’Micro Rainbow’ offers a welcome melodic respite at this point, layering thick brass notes, playful whistling and birdsong around a complex array of clicking and sliding beats that bounce along in a childlike wide-eyed manner, before ‘Bees’re Bees’ reintroduces Nathan Michel on vocals and guitar, and in some ways it reminded me of a glitch-electronics They Might Be Giants, Michel’s sweet pop vocal sliding over a clattering landscape of mangled notes that somehow manages to hang together gloriously. And just when you think it’s all over, there’s even a neat cut-up and rearranged spoken word credits announcement, complete with translations into Japanese and French – cute.

A comparatively petite album at just 38 minutes, ‘Go Pets Go’ represents an inspired progression onwards from the pop experimentation DAT Politics commenced on their preceding album ‘Plugs Plus’, and in my opinion, it may be their most coherent and fully-realised full-length to date. After a listen right through ‘Go Pets Go’ at full volume you’re likely to resemble that aforementioned dinosaur on the sleeve – dizzy and disoriented, yet filled with the kind of giddy and strangely pleasurable headache that only a quality sugar rush can provide. While the more faint-hearted may run for cover at the wildly unpredictable bpms and often violently timestretched and digital smashed up vocals, fans of the crazed yet meticulously detailed likes of Kid 606 and Jason Forrest / Donna Summer will find much to love here. Recommended.

Check out: www.chicksonspeed-records.com and www.ski-pp.com