Search - Prolapse :: Ghosts of Dead Aeroplanes

A wonderfully tight ball of post-punk tension

Aaron Burgess | Round Rock, TX, USA | 08/08/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Snaking through the same grimy halls previously tread by the Fall, Moonshake, "Metal Box"-era PiL and James Plotkin's Flux project (see the tense, angular opener, "Essence of Cessna"), Prolapse's third U.S. album (and fourth overall) emerges as more than just a linkage of post-punk influences. Less angular than 1996's "Backsaturday," more sexy than 1998's "The Italian Flag," "Ghosts of Dead Aeroplanes" finds the Leicester, England, group in a somewhat dubbed-out, clearly late-'90s mode, their tension, sensuality and textural beauty both stretched out and magnified. Of course the old Prolapse are still banging away here (the lengthy, riotous "Cylinders V12 Beats Cylinders 8"), as are the trademark twin vocals of Mick Derrick (the snotty one) and Linda Steelyard (the emotionally detached one). While Derrick snorts and rants over tracks like "One Illness" and the cyclonic "Government of Spain," Steelyard uses her composure as counterpoint. Meanwhile the music whirls and seethes around the unlikely pair, its G (as in "groove") Force keeping them trapped together in the hurricane's eye. Not only is the resulting tension sexual; it's personal, political ("Spain"), and uncomfortably psychological ("After After")."