HEALTH: Get Color

Here's a comparison you won't hear too frequently. HEALTH are like a stand-up comedian. You know how you can buy their tapes and listen to their jokes at your own leisure.

The laughs are still just as funny, yet you don't feel quite the same as your hysterics gain you yet another increasingly hostile look on the underground. Added to that, the "I Seek You" classified advert you took out: "I was the guy wetting himself, you were the girl who yelled 'get the mop' in a figure-hugging green dress" has yet to get any response.

Some things, although still effective in isolated conditions, work so much better in a live arena. The rhythmic flurry of the audience, the incessant lights which reduce your vision to around two-frames-per-second. The tribal angst of the band on stage as they pound their skins with the tenacity with which Charlton Heston pounds the beach.You can almost hear him scream "Damn you! God damn you all to hell!".

Nonetheless, HEALTH have given us their latest electro-noise-shoegaze-dance-indie concoction on record, and enjoy it we shall.

The use of familiar elements is likely to lead to cases of deja vu fairly quickly with Get Colo[u]r, the groove-based track often rely on eclectic noise patterns, androgynous vocals and thumping percussion. If you're willing to ascribe to the notion that tracks don't have to be individually outstanding, you'll do well with this one. Prepare yourself instead for thirty-three minutes of morphing, electrifying experimentation.

"We Are Water" is a perennial highlight of the album though, initiating itself with a stomping bass-drum it quickly flows into a statically-charged track throwing up its arms as it walks through the city slaying immaterial opposers with a broadsword. The unrelenting rhythm gather more steam until the final minute where a gigantic crescendo is reached, sending the song down on a note of magnificent resolution.

The allusions to My Bloody Valentine are unlikely to subside with this album, if anything, they will increase. The mix of dissonance, cacophony and sublime voices reverberated through a desolate chamber make up the back-bone of both bands, although HEALTH enjoy mixing in a healthy dose of tribal sacrifice rites to the compound. Imagine - for a second - that Liars were a decent band, and not a group of delusional, self-aggrandising art-school toffs and you'll have an idea as to where HEALTH lay their hat.

Grandstanding single "Die Slow" achieves the aim of all experimental dance groups. It gets the hips of the artistically liberal a swinging, and leaves readers of Q Magazine whimpering in the corner screaming "make it stop! make it stop! Norah Jones, make it stop!". While their sonic palette ropes in a whole host of bizarre traits, it's gratifying that the band keep the beats simple. "Die Slow" relies on a simple percussion line throughout, without the sterile repetition of mainstream dance music [spits]. The laying of technicolour skin over simplistic bones makes for a vessel which can energise feet and minds.

With an increasingly high profile thanks to ATP appearances and slots on the Nine Inch Nails tour, soon HEALTH will be available to all regardless of their station in life. While the album is an excellent primer for the anatomy of a show, we'd still advise you get yourself down to the show.