Probably the weakest selection from Ben Medcalf’s Lumina album: take your pick as to the reasons why. Luc Prosser’s hungover vocals where it hurts just to be under the sun, the drop off in tempo, the need to be a ‘song’ when in the clutch of a series of club thuds, or the simplified electro dimensions/rock-soaked connections (only hassled by a Spaghetti Junction cyber dial-up) that regurgitate deep-rooted arguments about guitars and electronics.
Cassette Jam’s leaden electro carries on getting busy on the cowbell (the enduring human touch to the digitalism) and the Rogue’s sparkplug punk chord twangs, but is way too simple of structure to befriend. As much as it disapproves of its mentor’s bid for chart approval in shoving it back onto the ‘floor headfirst, it does so with the light-fingered grip (and intelligence) of a bouncer working on commission. Still intent on keeping the dragging vocal unbroken, Medcalf’s Sunburst mix hits the highway, and with Prosser’s audition for Withnail and I comes a set of clanking downward tumbles drifting like Chinese lanterns made out of Lego, timed to match the head-spin of the lyrics over quite a light-hearted bump that The Rogue doesn’t usually come within miles of.
Competition winners Save the Rave – Spanish brace Javi Gongora and Jose Carlos Martinez – bring a prog-house solidity to Lumina the track, stretching the original’s already strung out mechanisms and flicking, quasi-epic synths that, for this package anyway, is a case of the pupil mastering the teacher.