Ratatat released LP3, their third album yesterday. It's very clearly Ratatat, in that it is electronic music with heavily processed guitars playing awesome harmonized riffs, backed by beats that are alternatingly rocking, dance-y, downtempo and glitchy noise. However, LP3 expands the Ratatat formula a bit by incorporating some more overt world music sounds and more varied production styles than their last two albums. There are fairly prominent tabla beats, exotic sounding string instruments, and even something that sounds an awful lot like a cuíca, which is the coolest novelty instrument of all time. As usual, there's a lot of stylistic variation from song to song. On the whole, the album is great, but there are a few inconsistent tracks that lack the punchiness of some of the better ones.
Here are a few of my favourites. "Shiller" opens the album with an awesome hypnotic harpsichord riff, and eventually adds more layers of synthy swoops and an epic guitar line, but never adds drums. "Shempi" is one of the most classically Ratatat tracks on the new album, and has this great synth lead that kicks in around the 1:00 mark that makes me want to nod my head in a very energetic fashion. "Mumtaz Khan" has some great percussion and an absolutely killer guitar line at 1:25.
Ratatat - Shiller
Ratatat - Shempi
Ratatat - Mumtaz Khan
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