Colder

Signed to Trevor Jackson’s record label Output, Colder continues the boss’s Playgroup-honed habit of updating ’80s synth music for a post-millennial age. In this case, Parisian resident Marc Nguyen Tan tackles such disparate influences as synth-pop, dub, Krautrock and post-punk. But the professional graphic designer and video producer creates a surprisingly new sound that manages to be more than the sum of its used parts. Throughout the album, Tan’s lightly accented vocals have a dark, come-hither edge to them that brings some soothing danger to the minimalist music. The production is, of course, pretty impeccable, but that’s not unusual in contemporary dance circles. Thankfully, Tan bothered to write some actual songs that would carry the album beyond nostalgia-flavoured chill out, succeeding most notably with the slow-building dark pop of "Crazy Love,” the spacey funk-laden "Version” and the minimalist glitch-pop tune "Colder.” Using Joy Division and Can as his basic templates, Tan pulls off an appropriately stylish win with an album equal parts cool and cold. Oh, and as an added incentive, he includes a half-dozen of his own homemade "DVD short films” (aka music videos) on a bonus disc — all of which are perfectly good background imagery and/or stoner zone-out fodder.