What’s this all about, then? ‘Transcentury is a made up word by the band, meaning people who are not afraid to be different and stand out from the crowd,’ the Bristolian electro duo explain in the press blurb which accompanies this release. It doesn’t make any sense, and while I’d love to file it under Nathan Barly-esque postmodern parody’, what resonates most on listening to the EP’s four tracks is the screaming absence of irony.
The first song, ‘Disco Bunny’ is, they say, ‘a positive upbeat futuristic disco-inspired track about a street performer called Pablo who dresses up as “The Disco Bunny”’. It has the scope to be a side-splitting observational piece, but the chorus of ‘dance with disco bunny / I’ll take you to a place / I’ll take you to a place’ and lines about ‘positivity’ and ‘dancing in the street’, not to mention the po-faced delivery, which pans out over a lightly funky late 80searly 90s chart groove is depressingly straight and lacking in any kind of wit.
‘The Pride in All of Us’ starts out like George Michael’s ‘Jesus to a Child’ before ripping off the style of Pulp’s ‘Sheffield: Sex City’ with a dash of Test Department. The Erasure-eque ‘Sapphire’ is flamboyant and groovy, but the socio-political lyrics are clumsy and the whole thing sounds quite dated.
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They save the best till last, and explain that ‘the title track invites you into their world and lists the people and the albums they are inspired by and has a dance & experimental feel’. Actually, it sounds like a lift of ‘It’s Grim Up North’ by the JAMMS, but instead of listing town and cities, it’s a list of artists, punctuated by a refrain of ‘we’re living in trancentury / so tenderly / so cleverly /transcentury world.’ As a critic, I feel as if my job’s been done for me.
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