Kasabian Kasabian Arista, 2004 amazon

I'm not sold on this whole concept of getting bands airplay by selling their songs to video game developers for use as backing music. Blur's "Song 2" was a bit of a strange opener to FIFA World Cup 1998, while "Stop The Rock" by Apollo 440 was driven into the ground in FIFA 2001. Recently i was pleased to hear "Over the Counter Culture" by Jam descendants the Ordinary Boys in the excellent Burnout 3:Takedown, but on the whole i find games tend to introduce new artists and music with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Why do i discuss this? Because it took me a while to figure out why "L.S.F. (Lost Souls Forever)" from the 2004 debut record by Kasabian sounded so familiar: because i'd heard it in FIFA 2004. Luckily, the album is powerful enough to overcome any video game-related overexposure. It opens with the rolling bassline of "Club Foot", a dance punk adventure recalling current torchbearers the Rapture and accompanied by a cocky vocal sneer ("chase down an empty street, blindly snap the broken beats"). Rather than let this tone define the album, Kasabian then move into the Happy Mondays-esque groove of "Processed Beats", followed by "Reason Is Treason" which would sound right at home on Primal Scream's XTRMNTR. The aforementioned "L.S.F." circles around a Ladytron-type synth line. So many references and parallels to point out, but that doesn't detract from the experience. Kasabian aren't writing any new chapters in the anthology of music, but they certainly make the present chapter more interesting.

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