Colder - The Rain and Goodbye

The Guardian 80

(Bataille)

Unlike contemporaries such as Trevor Jackson, whose early-2000s label Output he was once signed to; Ivan Smagghe, with whom he was associated in electroclash’s heyday; and Andrew Weatherall and his clear affinity for krautrock, post-punk and dub, Colder’s Marc Nguyen Tan has never quite reached boiling point. Perhaps this double album, which arrives after a 10-year hiatus, will bring the French producer the recognition he deserves. Goodbye’s 60s lounge-bop and rockabilly noir sounds like what you’d hear on the Double R diner stereo; Rain, however, is chillier, more unsettling and, in the case of the breathy All Along the Way, trés sexy. Mango Coconut underlines his knack for desert whammy twangs and the urgent repetition of a lone, cold bass note; there’s textured ambience on Market Day, like a bonfire crackling on a glacier, and on Re501 Friday Night, with its sense of industrial dread. Other tracks, meanwhile, suggest Suicide slinking up to Can on a smoke-filled dancefloor. David Lynch fans should be lining up.