Japanese Popstars – Mojo: Controlling Your Allegiance [Review] (PRESS, UK)

Big room dance beats featuring big name vocalists.

The Chemical Brothers have spent two decades harnessing repetitive beats for festival crowds; it’s hardly a new concept. But recent success for Pendulum and Magnetic Man proves that the appetite for dance music, stadium rock-style, shows no signs of abating.

The Japanese Popstars enter the fray brandishing formidable weapons. The Northern Irish trio’s second album won’t fail on ambition. To call the line-up of stellar guest vocalist diverse would be doing it an injustice.

Take your pick from Robert Smith, Jon Spencer, Chicago house eccentric Green Velvet, Editors’ frontman Tom Smith, Irish folksters Lisa Hannigan and James Vincent McMorrow as well as Morgan Kibby from Gallic nugazers M83. The latter’s contribution to spacey bliss pop of Fight The Night shows that away from the regulation whooshing breakbeat pomp and techno stomp (like Spencer’s contribution, Destroy, a deliciously oppressive amphetamine trip), there’s subtlety in The Japanese Popstars’ arsenal.