MIRACLE

Duo mixing up Sunn O))) and Depeche Mode’s heroin years.

Full disclosure: this writer would normally take an album called The Strife Of Love In A Dream, place it in a locker, row that locker out to the middle of a lake, tie a rock to it and throw it over the side. Then laugh manically like a Bond villain, pet my Persian cat and go back to living under my volcano. More fool me. This latest album from Steve Moore (Zombi) and Daniel O’Sullivan, who appears to play everything and has played with everyone, is a ruddy journey through electro pop and the kind of bad dreams that haunt you for days. Imagine if

Type O Negative had shared a rehearsal space with Heaven 17 and you’re close. Which is not to undermine their worth: a song like Dreamours is worth a hundred times the title they’ve given it. It’s elegiac, downbeat and yet somehow blissful too: you could call it intoxicating and be forgiven for the superlative. Their press release, too, sounds all the wrong notes. It’s so pretentious and baffling, it makes the beautiful sound impenetrable: it’s almost like the 80s never ended. That said, the final track, the ringing Angelix (which manages to conjure up both Lamb and Brian Eno) is a spiralling rocket ride into effervescent glory.