Ape School – Ape School [Album]
 

150 years after the publication of “The Origin of Species” the debate about Darwinism versus creationism, unbelievably, seems to be raging stronger than ever. Why can’t people simply accept we are related to apes? The slightly disturbing album cover (applying human features to an oil painting of an ape) suggests a form of evolution (or is that mutation?). The PR blurb for this album is couched in the language of higher education and learning:

Whether nature or nurture, all outward signs aim to create an aura of mystery and intrigue around Ape School. The biographical details are a little more prosaic: head ape Michael Johnson’s CV includes stints in alt-rockers Holopaw and Lilys with a solo album “Nonsense Goes Mudslide” released in between in 2003. Originally from Florida he is now a music technology lecturer in Philadelphia and a ‘co-conspirator’ of Ninja Tune’s electronica dandy Daedelus. This, his first album under the name Ape School, was mixed in Jamaica and is released on Ninja Tune’s off-shoot imprint Counter Records. So, with such an array of influences, environments, and locations where does all this leave the music? Well “Ape School” (the record) is a remarkably savvy hybrid of bedroom indietronica mixed with analog synth-pop that includes rock song structures - all topped off by an art-house tenor croon. It is far from primitive and as you spend more time with it, the album actually becomes richly seductive.

Album openers “Wail to God” and “That’s OK” display strong hooks and an equally strong pop sensibility. The crooning “Did What I Did” and “It’s Over” come across like an electro Magnetic Fields. “My Intention” opens with loose funky break-beats before the keyboards and chiming falsetto vocals come in, sounding uncannily like The Associates’ Billy Mackenzie at his most extravagant. “Deathstomp” is a happy marching song and “Floridian Grime” an uplifting pop anthem over (electronic) junkshop rhythms. With most songs under the three minute mark and several just two minutes in length, "Ape School" moves along at a brisk pace with each song using a distinct melodic or instrumental hook to suggest a greater variety than actually exists. Nonetheless this is an enjoyable journey that manages to take in elements of glam and psychedelia, dress them up with echo and reverb and never sound forced or contrived.

For an electronic album (Johnson claims to be working with the fourth modular synthesiser made by Robert Moog) it is wonderfully natural. If it starts to fade in the final three songs, the album makes enough of a tuneful impression early on to outlive this drift. Fresh-but-vintage electro-pop is everywhere across the charts, the airwaves and the column inches currently but there should be room in that sprawling family tree for this clever take on the genre to find its own place.

Intelligent design indeed.