Album Review: The Scientists Of Modern Music - A Personal Universe

You've got to give The Scientists Of Modern Music some credit – when it comes to making driving electro bombs they're certainly not here to fuck spiders, and A Personal Universe is as unrelentingly dancefloor as anything to come out of the Australian dance music crossover movement in recent memory. Working against them is the inescapable truth that it brings little to the table that their more illustrious forebears haven't brought before, and in decidedly more exhilarating fashion.

That A Personal Universe falls a little short isn't through lack of trying from the Tasmanian lab partners – the sometimes dirty, sometimes dreamy electro-pop soundscapes crafted by Cal Young and Simon McIntosh have all the right moves and watertight grooves to boot. Happy You Came, with its subtle chorus backing vocals from Kesta Krohn, is a hug-your-bestie sunset anthem in the making that recalls late-era PNAU, while Shades Of Grey takes their trademark 4/4 electro throb into halftime breakdown territory without even the slightest hint of dubstep before reaching back for the skies. Then in the final third you hit Digital Fear, driven by a spiralling Moroder-esque bassline which really takes off when the aliens from War Of The Worlds chime in for a ripping synth solo in the bridge.

It's all perfectly constructed, suitably banging and guaranteed to slay open fields or sweaty tents, yet it's highly unlikely anything on A Personal Universe will lodge itself in your brain for long beyond the four minutes it takes to digest each track. Which is a shame, because sonically at least, TSOMM aren't too far off the pack they're chasing.