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Cosey steps right out of the screen of a crackly old vhs to deliver her second release of heels and leather groovers, lifted straight from the sticky dancefloors of smoke stained clubs of the 1981 you wish you partied so hard in you forgot to remember. Driving, crunching and grinding through eight sassy tracks, the conveyor belt of analog tunes is constructed on a foundation of vintage synths and sequencers. Vocals, ice cold like a frozen strawberry daiquiri, guide you through the club to the jukebox next to the cigarette machine so you can pick out that track you like, the one with the spontaneous uplifting guitar hook that comes out of nowhere and kicks like that pill you forgot you took back in 1981. ( Daryl Sulfate, Diät )
Our take: Originally presented as a self-released cassette, Static Age Music does the world a favor and commits this brilliant new full-length from Berlin’s Cosey Mueller to vinyl. Static Age has brought us a bunch of great contemporary German electronic music lately, and Irrational Habits fits that trend. The songs feel like dance music because they’re built around primitive boom-bap rhythms, crisp, powerful, and placed right at the front of the mix. On first listen, you might think the best thing about Irrational Habits is the seedy, Berlin night club vibe it lays down, but there’s more to it than that. It’s not pop music per se, but Cosey has a way with a hook. A lot of those hooks appear as guitar riffs, which stand out because they contrast so sharply with the rest of the music. The rhythms and synth textures are cold, dry, and mechanical, but the guitar lines are drenched in Jesus and Mary Chain-esque reverb and played junkie-cool, sagging way behind the beat like Thunders after a particularly potent dose. That move is executed most memorably on the highlight “Tu Mir Was,” but it’s all over the record. The vocals, while understated and often drenched in effects, also provide highlights, like in the aforementioned “Tu Mir Was,” but also in “Dog Salon,” which has a B-52’s-ish surreality I like. The propulsive EBM-ish foundation keeps me edging the volume knob ever higher when I listen to Irrational Habits, but the pop peaks really push it to the next level.