The Presets Apocalypso by: Ed Butler Tue:29-Apr-08 Label: Modular Year: 2008 WB rating 72 out of 100

By naming their sophomore effort Apocalypso, Sydney’s The Presets are making a statement of intent. This is the album to make them, elevate them to international superstars, joining other Aussies in the new dance movement. Label Modular certainly seem to think so, if the recent advertising blitz is anything to go buy – particularly considering the comparatively muted release of stablemates Cut Copy’s In Ghost Colours not a month ago. All of this, then, naturally begs the question; is it any good? Or is it a true namesake: sound and fury, signifying nothing?

There certainly is a lot of sound. On the band’s 2005 debut, Beams, there was a clear and conscious effort to pair the dancefloor with the Marshall stack, keyboards intentionally distorted and fuzzed up to sound like bizarre, future-world guitars, such as on the killer single ‘Are You the One?’ On Apocalypso, The Presets seem to have sniffed the proverbial wind and embraced the dance scene more wholeheartedly, tracks like ‘Together’ and ‘Aeons’ essentially residing on the same branch of the musical family tree as much of a Ministry of Sound compilation.

Upon early listens, it is tough to reconcile the fact that Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes were once students of Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music. In fact, it’s difficult to hear any possible connection between the Beethoven and Mozart of their youth, and their present output. But, upon closer inspection, Apocalypso is a collection of electrified, steroid-enhanced mini-symphonies, traditional songwriting notions of verse-bridge-chorus, while loosely adhered to, playing less of a role than atmospherics and maintaining flow.

Symphonic ambitions and classical upbringings aside, however, The Presets can certainly create gold when the stars align correctly – as Hamilton’s contribution to Silverchair’s classic from last year, ‘Straight Lines’ indicated. ‘My People’ is an ecstatic call to arms, a party anthem for the Gen Y crowd that has so enthusiastically embraced the retro-dance scene. Equally wonderful is ‘This Boy’s in Love’, with the now-expected staccato keys adding percussive effect to Moyes’ frenetic drum patterns, while piano stabs and Hamilton’s rarely-heard falsetto create an exquisite piece of pop-art. It’s one of the best songs of the year so far, and if anything is going to propel The Presets into the musical stratosphere, it will be this.

Moyes and Hamilton manage to keep things fresh and heterogeneous despite a sound which could easily slip into lazy repetition, pounding dancefloor beats married to fuzzed-out effects. Occasionally, there are breaks in the rhythm, including ‘Yippio-ay’ and its Daft Punk-isms, and ‘If I Know You’. Julian Hamilton’s booming baritone carries the day, even if his efforts at a gentler falsetto don’t quite resonate as successfully. Even then though, hearing the entire album in one sitting is something of a test of stamina, tracks like ‘Eucalyptus’, with its hyperactive beats and quasi-epic bridge particularly draining.

In fact, the album’s three closing tracks appear to point towards The Presets’ future direction: the dancefloor. And let’s hope not. When The Presets hit their straps, producing their monumentally idiosyncratic synth-rock, they are indeed head and shoulders above their contemporaries. To venture into the nebulous, murky nether regions of the rave scene, where standing out in a genre built around homogeneity is a feat bordering on the impossible, would be a mistake of stunning proportions.

And this highlights The Presets’ greatest weakness: their inexplicable, and maddeningly frustrating inconsistency. How can the two gents who created ‘This Boy’s in Love’ turn out the turgid boredom of ‘Aeons? When it comes to a chart blitzkrieg, however, filler tracks at the back of the album are of less concern to The Presets than to, say, Mogwai. So, to answer the original question, is this the album that will turn The Presets into monsters of the new musical mythology, or maintain their status as local classically trained party-mongers, there is certainly enough to suggest that the killer on Apocalypso will, indeed, provide the boost they need to take the world by storm. As a cohesive listening experience, however, Apocalypso is determinedly volatile, stunningly uplifting and exciting one minute, a tepid mess the next. When everything wraps up, though, the good well outweighs the bad, and The Presets at their best are still masterful purveyors of dancefloor-filling power-pop beats. Expect to see them on Rove Live or Letterman soon.