The future, then. The sound of pop eating itself, throwing up into a bag and then getting a spoon and digging in. A mash-up of everything — largely very sickly EDM, but also trance, house, power ballads, industrial techno, soft rock, winsome acoustic guitar. Meticulous to the point of almost derangement, endlessly inventive both musically and rhythmically, full of arch puns. Such as the album’s title here — Apple. Mr Cook is the boss of the record label PC Music. Geddit? Sides splitting? That’s the other thing — the future also promises to be very irritating.
What you cannot doubt is A.G. Cook’s nerdish attention to detail, nor the crucial thing overlooked too often — he writes a good tune, as in the opener here, ‘Oh Yeah’, which is simultaneously utterly inane and pretty.
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