Tag Archives: Vienna Ditto

Vienna Ditto – Ticks EP

Released 13th May 2016

Vienna Ditto, the best Tarantino-esque duo to have never soundtracked a Tarantino film, have followed up their 2015 album Circle with the EP Ticks, with whose generous seven-track length they are really spoiling us.

This collection is as eclectic as Circle was a neat, coherent summing up of the voodoo sci-fi blues they peddle. The EP’s title track is a menacing rockabilly tale of identity theft; Tiny Tambourines wouldn’t sound out of place amongst Depeche Mode’s early 2000s glitchy blues electronica; and Frank Account is a slinky dollop of sinister Andrews Sisters harmonies.

They cover two Negro spirituals – Motherless Child and Go Down Moses; while their rendering of the former is beautifully restrained, its melancholic marriage of voice and twangy guitar more reflecting the isolating misery whence this song came than the comforting togetherness its performance was intended to achieve, the latter becomes a Chelsea Dagger-style romp – yet they make both sound as if they’re original compositions.

The gems here are the gloriously unsettling My Way of Missing You, a Sergio Leone-homaging and apparently Adam Curtis-inspired triphoppy triumph, and Come Back, a frenetic rock n’ roll drum machine anti-love song, whose cosmic synth wig-out outtro signs off this genre-melding audio embodiment of unease and impudence perfectly.

From Nightshift, May 2016

2016

Vienna Ditto – Ticks EP – May 2016

Wild Swim – Untitled EP – January 2016

Vienna Ditto – Ugly EP

November 2013

The atmospheric slinky drama of the lead song of Vienna Ditto’s latest EP, Ugly, evokes a glorious red velvet-draped, dusky cavern of deception and intrigue, with space-age synths redolent of Jean Michel Jarre in his 70s prime and crunchy drums framing seductive slide guitar twangs.

The slower and measured By Way Of Apology is reminiscent of the claustrophobic electro-blues of some of Depeche Mode’s ballads and their main songwriter Martin Gore’s albums of covers, not least by way of Hatty Taylor’s voice, whose vibrato-soaked insouciance here creates an unconvincing testimony. In Stop, a seemingly defiant tale of a parting, sinister spaghetti western jangly chords, spooky half tones and unusual percussive experiments convey a Twin Peaks level of festering distrust.

With this collection, the “voodoo sci-fi blues” duo conjure up a more effective image of Westworld-esque double-crossing robot duels than that term could in itself; there’s some malicious intent going on, and all the better for it.

From Nightshift, November 2013