Figment
2007
Sing, Memory
About This Album
The solo debut from Black Box Recorder chanteuse Sarah Nixey takes up the extroverted electronic pop trajectory signaled by that beloved band's (evidently) final album, Passionoia, and ventures a good deal further in that direction, emerging as a full-fledged collection of stylish 21st century dance-pop in the vein of Goldfrapp, Dot Allison, and Róisín Murphy. Characteristically, the emphasis is less on "pop" and "dance" than on "style," but Nixey and her collaborators (chief among them James Banbury, a former Auteur and member of the downtempo/IDM outfit InfantJoy) never let setting the right mood interfere with a good hook or a groove -- in any event, the album is both impossibly glamorous and immensely pleasurable to listen to. It's divided between dancefloor-ready tracks -- the sensational candy-disco single "Strangelove," the similar, slinkier "Beautiful Oblivion," the genially funky "Nothing on Earth," which could easily pass for latter-day Kylie Minogue tune -- and more downtempo, slightly trip-hop-inflected material both dark ("Masquerade") and sweet (the electro-romance "When I'm Here with You") and usually somewhere in between -- a split which is roughly mapped by the album's two titular halves, each of which has its own spoken preface.
Track List (try tracks 3,4,7,9,11 and 15)

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