Beats For Beginners Don't Fly Into The Sun. Release Date : May 25, 2005. Label: Aporia. Rating: Andy doesn't dig rating stuff. Beats For Beginners is very 21st century nightmare as seen by the 60's overlord-death-doom-premonition sort of feeling. It's like a weird interpretation of "1984" only it took a swim through the 80's anyhow to get here. You know, like it was seen retrospectively after the disaster already happened. The album really gets going on the second track, "Technology." The first tune, "Summer Lovers," is a bit trite, perhaps it's just the candy-bubble-gum at the start to fill you with happy innocence before whacking you about with disembodied robot arms. The sound is like the Beatles wrestling with Air. It's so very Manchester - just listen to some of the accents come out. The whole thing is rife with great beats - go figure I guess. The way Mike TV dips through his lyrics is a beautiful thing. Perfectly-placed reverb, odd dissections of syllables, trip out songs, raging rave dancers, mostly a drug-induced experience full of colours and images and fanciful rhymes and noises. Absolutely movie soundtrack matierial. As it goes on, I hear a bit of Ladytron, newer Dandy Warhols, and video games hah. "Kill All DJs" has some awesome lines... they're all scum / they get paid too much / they fake the funk. "Mechanical Man" has an electro-country vibe. In between all the pandemonium-inducing songs are brief mellow breakdowns, like the sitar-laced "Don't Fly Into The Sun" and thew flowy "Need You TOnight." These are gentle respites from the rest of the stuff. The water break in the rave night. In "Pick Up The Phone" we start to get some strings! It's a lovely song, it's like being in the woods or something. Long floaty instrumental. But we're back on the horse in "Death Of A C-List Celebrity" ... self-explanatory subject matter there. Is there anything about this life these guys are happy with? The ending track, "You Can't Kill A Dead Man," is great. It's all echoey space music about... killing dead men. Lilty chorus about letting horse go free. It's a very oldschool britpop song, I love it. Song of choice : Absolutely "You Can't Kill A Dead Man." -Andy Scheffler Elsewhere Beats For Beginners website Published : June, 2005.