Mylo – Destroy Rock & Roll review

Originally Released May 24th 2004. Review originally published April 1st 2007.

Born on the Scottish island of Skye but mis-spending much of his youth digesting the AOR sound of Amercia’s west coast, Mylo could be forgiven for a fucked up musical point of view. Instead,  Destroy Rock & Roll was one of the dance reference points of the early noughties, a technically savvy but languidly deft combination of samples, pop worshipping beats and a welter of worn-on-the-sleeve influences ranging from Prince to Kraftwerk and all points in between .

Using a palette of eighties soul, dance and euro-pop, Destroy Rock & Roll was the ultimate makeover, treating the aging source material reverentially but showing it the time of it’s life whilst leaving just enough cheese to kick a handbag round to.

Here downtempo openers Valley of the Dolls and Sunworshipper make way for the chilled out groove of Muscle Cars, before the producer finally works things up on Drop The Pressure, whose refrain you guess stressed out playground assistants everywhere as schoolkids across the chanted it as loud as they could under the staff room window.

Stealing with pride, In My Arms borrows heavily from obscure American duo Boy Meets Girl’s one hit wonder Waiting For A Star To Fall, whilst Guilty of Love is an unlikely blend of AFKAP samples over a refrain which Dollar would have been falling over themselves to ruin.

Otto’s Journey is as close to Daft Punk as you can legally get without lawyers being involved (But hey, in a good way, right ?) but Musclecar Reform Reprise is a wonderful, sex-laden tribute to ein trash kraut disco which feels like a hand inside your waistband and Zenophile is a funky double take recalling the best of Metro Area.

Closing up with the awesome re-work of Kim Carnes Need You Tonite and the chilled out noodlings of Emotion 98.6, Mylo proves that there is art into splicing together his petty thefts and making the whole a dippy, dance-tastic sum greater than it’s mostly forgotten parts. Joy.