Mylo's debut full length starts off on a breezy flyaway note with "Valley Of The Dolls," a gauzy concoction that lilts along sublimely with its "da da da da" hooks, then continues on the slow and groovy tip by way of "Sunworshipper" with its repeated vocal refrain from what sounds like a member of the 60s counterculture talking about his escape from the rat race over a laid back drum track and glistening synths. And while the tempo is soon revved up to a throbbing electro stomp with "Musclecars," Mylo still counterbalances the heavier beat beautifully with layers of delicate synth programming that simultaneously soothe and invigorate. After this relatively peaceful fare, "Drop The Pressure" comes sprawling out as more of a straight club jam with its distorted "Motherfucker's gonna drop the pressure" hook over a bouncy rhythm track and rubbery bassline while "In My Arms" is the album's unabashed tribute to the 1980s with prominent samples from both Kim Carnes "Bette Davis Eyes" and "Waiting For A Star To Fall" by Boy Meets Girl.
The swirling string opening of "Guilty Of Love" leads into a breakbeat rhythm and elegantly building synth structure leading into "Paris Four Hundred," which utilizes a similar formula but replaces the strings with shuddering guitar chords and stuttered vocal lines. Title track "Destroy Rock & Roll" utilizes the same sample notorious audio magpies Negativland made famous on their "Michael Jackson" track, though Mylo adds a decidedly more dancefloor-ready surrounding to the cut-up audio of a preacher's moral rant against a laundry list of early 80s pop heroes like Missing Persons and Duran Duran.
Now admittedly, "Destroy Rock & Roll" is so laden with electro-stabbed instrumentals that some of the tracks begin to blend into one another and by the time you reach "Rikki" and "Otto's Journey" the stammering synth riffs start sounding almost interchangeable, but then Mylo happily tweaks the formula on "Musclecar (Reform Reprise)," a slightly harder version of the preceding "Musclecars" track that adds a female soliloquy seductively touting the virtues of her favorite muscle cars (which wouldn't sound out of a place on a Star 69 release) amidst meaty guitar riffs and "Zenophile" which mixes acoustic guitars lines and few jazzy horn bits into the gracefully bubbling musical backdrop.
As we draw towards the end, Mylo returns to the tranquil mood from the start
of the CD with the luxurious "Need You Tonite," a definite highlight of the
album with its intermingling of plush string arrangements and gorgeously
harmonized female vocal bits, as well as the soothing electronic siren call
of the album's shimmering closing track "Emotion" that effectively brings
the album to a stylistic full circle. Altogether "Destroy Rock & Roll"
really marks Mylo as a name to watch as it takes the listener on a
satisfying musical journey which should appeal to both clubland denizons and
progressive electronic music fans alike.
