Caned & Able - Dark Matter

'Dark Matter is our step into the big league' says Caned & Able's Patrick Bird of their new album. Bold words, ambitious; but on launching an album, you'd be a bit worried if the band wasn't - this is their labour of love after all, the sum of all their effort and craft compiled into an hour of tunery.

So yes, ambition is to be expected here. As for Dark Matter, that mysterious, elusive substance that we don't really know much about, well, let us try and throw a little light on this particular bit of matter.

Caned & Able are a London based production outfit, previously working with The Verve and Primal Scream - beyond that though, their record really does speak for them best. Caned & Able might be creators of their own sound, but in a way, they are also born out of the music they make; the nine tracks of Dark Matter coming together to add flesh to their bones. It's this slowly building, skeletal aspect that establishes itself on first track Lyrical G - minimal and threatening, it presents a gritty urban landscape.

Upon these foundations, the record is quick to lay down the rock influences too though. Flanged Stone Roses-esque guitar wraps itself around the songs like an old jacket dug up from the bottom of your wardrobe - it's that sense of something almost forgotten, dredged up from the darkest memories of your past. There's a cut and paste vibe to the tracks' construction throughout the album, a stitching together of disparate elements, a wallpapering of the songs with a tough-talking 90s edge.

When Dark Matter wants to be, it can be as smooth as a shot of premium whiskey, but then just like that, it'll play snarly and raw. Raver sees the album at its most 'rock' - Imagine Hard-Fi crossed with Blur's Parklife. Untamed and loose, we get a more personal take on life here as a list of who knows how many kinds of booze is reeled off. 'I'm already trolleyed', we're told, and it doesn't surprise us. There's a black sense of humour everywhere - uneasy at times, but utterly enthralling too, beckoning us further into the dark.

Bulletproof Vest is another of the more forceful numbers, again rolling in the 90s influences. This time it's like The Shamen are rapping to a Fools Gold beat, and it sounds glorious. Bursting out in a trippy symphony of twitching synths halfway through, it's all brilliantly bonkers.

It's hard to pin down exactly what this album is - it really is as elusive as its title suggests. Is it a rap record, or is it an electronica record? Or is it something else entirely? The album finds itself suffused in an overriding cloak of darkly pulsating electro sounds, very Ian Brown, if anything.

You'll have heard Radio 1 championing Maverick Sabre a lot recently and Caned & Able definitely touch on many of the same grounds as he does. Throughout, the album is defined by the sound of the street, a worldly ambiance that captures within it a snatch of the most shadowy moments of everyday lie.

And then you come to the lead single Monkey Song. In the context of the album it's perhaps almost a little too jaunty, packing a cockney cheekiness straight out of Lock Stock. A sunny strum or two of guitar trip into a futuristic synth riff - a real meeting of two worlds; a shopping centre of influences and sounds. In this track, as with the rest of the album, Caned & Able pull on and then discard these labels and categories as if they were items of clothing, bucking trends and striking out on their own, forming themselves as a shapeshifter-like entity of remarkable ingenuity.

Plan B... Devlin... the UK is going through something of a renaissance in British rap at the moment, and with Dark Matter, Caned & Able stand poised to make their shot at the big time too.

Dark Matter is released on the 30th May.

Dave Stewart - The Blackbird Diaries

Dave Stewart, co-founder of the Eurythmics, is a man of many talents. Sitting down to listen to his latest album, beautifully titled The Blackbird Diaries, you'd do well not to expect any of the synthpop constructions Stewart made his name with back in the 80s. What you get instead is an album of soothing, laid-back rock; ranging from blues-laced country tunes to straight up contemporary guitar-pop tunes, perhaps the best ties with Stewart's past come in immense capacity for emotion these thirteen tracks hold.

Bulletproof Vest aches with a kind of heartfelt beauty that holds you enraptured, rocking you slowly back and forth in its comforting arms. The album feels natural, organic, and surprisingly snappy for a record bearing such chilled overtones - there's a real eagerness to the music. 'This was my favourite time ever in the studio,' says Stewart of the album. 'I wrote most of the songs on the spot and recorded all of them in one incredible session lasting five days and nights!' - and the album bears that stamp of immediacy, there's a movement to every track here - you'll find no stagnant pools of musical nothingness here, a problem that plagues so many adult rock records. Indeed, the fact Stewart was able to pen the album so quickly only goes to highlight his considerable song songwriting talent.

Tracks like Beast Called Tame, all raw, snarling guitar, see the album at its most intense, recalling REM at their most powerful. They swagger and stride out, standing proud and tall, setting out the immovable foundations that help bookend the softer centre of the album. Trading guitars in for piano and adding in a delightful touch of female vocals, love ballads like All Messed Up recall The Beautiful South, a sound carried through strongest on to Cheaper Than Free. British Stewart might be, but a distinct Southern lilt tinges The Blackbird Diaries with a distinctly American overtone - it's a transatlantic sound that encompasses a spirit of adventure and confidence.

This is an album of freedom and bold new horizons, but it's also full of good old fashioned storytelling wrapped up in the heart of the songs; on One Way Ticket To The Moon, Stewart sings 'That guy next door is a lot like me, I know he's got a lot of history'. It's simple rhymes like this that spread the charm of the songs out to the listener - suddenly we're all sat round the lounge, enjoying a few drinks, catching up on old times.

The album features, among other things, a co-write with Bob Dylan, and its a telling sign that Stewart's own songwriting carries the same literary style that has come to define Dylan's work. There's a beauty here, a window through to the soul, a window that The Blackbird Diaries keeps open wide. An honest autobiography or a passionately written series of diary entries? That's up to the listener to decide - but through each and every track here Stewart's stories of love and life have never felt more genuine. Wonderfully moving stuff.

The Blackbird Diaries is released on June 27th.