Architecture In Helsinki – Places Like This (Album)

Is it Rock? Is it Electro? Is it Disco? Don't bother trying to categorize Architecture in Helsinki, because their third and latest album, Places Like This, plucks a whole bunch of seemingly random styles and influences (too many to mention) and violently shakes them up into their own distinctive, definition-defying sound.

Using the technique of gradually layering different sounds, instruments and catchy 'hi-yaya' type vocal refrains, many of the songs have a build-up and fade-out again effect, giving them a pleasing sense of drama. The album kicks off with the aggressively in-yer-face Red Turned White - employing various electro-synth  'bleep-bleep, wah-wah' noises underneath urgent, verging-on-hysterical, vocals.

The gentler, but still foot-tappingly infectious Heart It Races then follows, in which calypso-style instruments and African rhythms make a welcome contrast. Add a sprinkling of jazz (Hold Music), trance (Underwater), indie (Like it or Not) and hip-hop (Debbie), and you end up with a real mixed bag that  falls somewhere between the electro-dirty-disco of the Scissor Sisters and the screechy, theatrical eccentricity of the Tiger Lillies. A daringly eclectic concoction that  skates just the right side of overkill.