Plugs Plus

Lille, France, is not a particularly beautiful, warm, or inviting city. So it doesn't come as much of a surprise that the music produced by this Lille-based computer music trio comes across at first listen as rather cold and jagged. What does come as something of a surprise is the fact that at second listen, the warmth and humor of their approach shines through the dirty and mechanistic beats and mutilated vocals generated by the group's cheap laptops. Perhaps never before has digital music sounded so...analog. There are actually hooks here, believe it or not, though they're generally buried kind of deep and have to be exhumed; "Pie" (which features vocals by Blectum From Blechdom), for example, almost begs you to sing along, while "Nitpickers" combines a frenetic drill'n'bass breakbeat with what sounds like a chorus of vintage telephones and a dime-store synthesizer melody line. What's not to love? Other tracks are a bit more forbidding, but even those are forbidding in a sort of, well, inviting way. Recommended.