Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys’ appearance on the spinetingling Do’s and the Don’ts single, taken from Boom Bip’s stellar Blue Eyed In The Red Room album certainly proved to be the start of something bigger, as the duo’s latest ongoing collaboration as Neon Neon clearly shows. This single Raquel represents the first taste of Neon Neon’s upcoming self-titled debut album, and presents two tracks taken from the longplayer alongside a remix by current UK it-boys Hot Chip.

Lead track Raquel certainly exhibits immediate similarities to Boom Bip’s most recent electro-house dominated Sacchrilege EP, and shows him merging vaguely Moroder-esque Italo-disco synths and bass sequences with DFA-friendly liberal sprinklings of cowbell, while Gruff goes for a semi-crooned New Romantic vibe in what’s apparently a tribute to Raquel Welch’s 1980s fling with Irish automobile magnate John Delorean.

If the aforementioned track shows Boom Bip going for the sort of radio friendly synth-pop demographic currently straddled by the aforementioned Hot Chip, Trick For Treat takes things in a completely different direction entirely, ushering in synth-heavy blip-hop programming and tense hyphy synths as Spank Rock’s Naeem Juaan contributes his trademark surreal-sleaze lyrical flow – while Hot Chip’s old-school flavoured rewiring manages to throw in plenty of bumping bass alongside some seriously chilly analogue synth action. It doesn’t quite manage to eclipse the paranoiac magnificence of the original version; easily the pick of the three tracks on offer here.

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1. Raquel (5.08)
2. Trick For Treat (4.25)
3. Trick For Treat (Hot Chip remix) (3.20)