Classic Album: Ladytron, Velocifero
Nettwerk, 2008
After they dropped the career-saving Witching Hour back in 2005, Ladytron took a three-year break before their fourth album follow up, Velocifero. Holing away in the luscious surrounds of a luxury studio in Paris, the quartet, made up of vocalists Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo and synth/production whizzes Daniel Hunt and Reuben Wu, got busy putting their hearts and souls into some new music. They wanted to build on their previous good work, and hone their increasingly experimental and mature song-writing skills.
Having cast off the trendy and limiting ‘electroclash’ tag, they continued to explore further into what reviewers at the time would uniformly describe as a much icier and bleaker sound.
Blending goth, techno, glam, indie, and new wave, with haunting lyrics and dense production, Velocifero would ever so slightly eclipse Witching Hour as the band’s crowning achievement.
“We wanted to consolidate what we had achieved with the first three albums,” says Daniel Hunt. “In particular, the third, Witching
Hour, which was a huge leap. “The longer a group works together, the further you get into your own universe. Outside influences become less and less important.”
The resulting album was filled with contrasts. With dark and light. Shadow and sunshine. At one moment you have the post-punk glory of I’m Not Scared, and then the soaring bass rumble of The
Lovers. Tracks like the Bulgarian kids TV show theme update Kletva catch you off guard and Predict the Day strips everything back to showcase their most minimal arrangement to date.
“We learned on the previous record to push things further,” says Hunt. “To test the extremes of how far we could go with a track, even if the end result isn’t ultimately used. We had this basic philosophy of always hearing an idea out, regardless of whether your instincts tell you it is going to work or not.”
Ladytron are back in the studio again and promise their first album in seven years by the autumn. The new single The Animals is out now and features a remix by Erasure’s Vince Clarke.