It’s certainly been a hell of a long time since the Ku-Ling Brothers’ last outing; towards the end of the nineties the collaborative pairing of Soundlab man Shane Norton and former Cabaret Voltaire founder Stephen Mallinder exerted a vital presence among the Australian dance music landscape, their seemingly ever-proliferating aliases such as Sassi & Loco further facilitated by their own Offworld Sounds label. After releasing a critically acclaimed debut album Creach and having their Evolution Of A Dope Fiend track featured on the seminal first Dope On Plastic compilation however, the Ku-Ling Brothers pretty much disappeared, their almost decade-long silence finally broken only by this latest album effort Here Come The Astronauts on UK indie label Publica. Though the Ku-Ling expanded band line-up these days sees members spread out between Western Australia and the UK, for the most part the Brothers’ established emphasis on hip hop, electro and breaks remains firmly in place here.

There’s certainly more of a ‘live band’ feel present however, with live instrumentation added to the mix as well as a brace of vocal guests that takes in Shaun Ryder, former Melankolic artist Day One and Yummy Fur vocalist Andrei Maz. Throughout, the predominant emphasis falls on mid-tempo hip hop and breaks, much in a similar vein to the likes of Fila Brazilia and Red Snapper. Curiously enough, the choice of phased effects applied to Shaun Ryder’s signature nasal vocals on opener Shape Shifter and Ice Cream, New York particularly calls to mind Underworld’s Karl Hyde, and in some senses it seems strange that they’ve gone to efforts to disguise such a distinctive vocalist. Elsewhere, the downbeat Fall Again sees Andrei Maz’s fuzzed-out indie-soul croon taking things down into the sorts of chilled territory populated by the likes of Aim and Zero 7, before Blue’s spy-funk breaks excursion takes thing off on the sort of trip perhaps last heard on the Propellorheads’s Decksanddrumsandrockandroll.

It’s all certainly suitably groovy stuff, however the above comparison highlights just how well-trodden much of the material here sounds – while it’s great to see the Ku-Ling Brothers back in action, unfortunately a lot of the breaks/hip hop territory being covered across these 11 tracks comes across as all a bit ‘1998.’