Beat Box

It's a nice and twisted mix of Punk-Electro-Disco-80's mood... So refreshing.
"Beat Box" it collects versions of tracks that the duo have been working on for the past year. (You can hear slightly different takes on "Rolling Down the Hills" and "Computer Love"-Kraftwerk's Cover- on the After Dark compilation.) Here, the group's electronic sound emerges fully formed: "Beatific" lumbers along on a farting basslines.
B/E/A/T/B/O/X finds them stripped down to Jewel's synths and drum machines and Ida No's diffident double-tracked vocals. Where the Chromatics sound like the first few seconds after leaving a club shortly before dawn four to the floor disco drums thumping in the background as the dawn air turns sweat cold, Glass Candy are a daytime proposition, hotter and bouncier. The album even opens with a skit set during an aerobics class.
The first proper track `Beatific' keeps thick slabs of bass afloat on waves of sibilant hi-hat that crash around Ida's vocals and simple pianohouse chords that fulfill the songs title. `Candy Castle' marries sublimely unconvincing mock-triumphal synthesized horn fanfares (as great as early Swizz Beatz productions) to joyous whoops. This is music made for nudging the volume dial ever higher. `Rolling Down the Hills' sounds like just that cruising in a car whilst ribbons of east coast hip-hop keyboard stream behind. 909 drums clomp under vocals that sound simultaneously wistful and celebratory. `Digital Versicolor' takes us out by jacking the arpeggio-synth sound from early `80s banned in the UK video nasty classic Shogun Assassin ("This is violence, this is violence," chants Ida) and stretching it into a melancholy synth jam.
Although less indebted to classic disco sounds than his other projects, this is Jewel's best work for the dancefloor, and for off it. Glass Candy takes their music further than most Italo-disco revivalists, investing it with purpose and character.