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ALBUM OF THE WEEK CHROME HOOF - Pre-Emptive False Rapture (Southern) - A firework of an album - a spectacular no-holds-barred unflinching declaration of world domination. Swollen with so many incongruous influences, Pre-Emptive False Rapture defies belief. Disco-prog? Doom metal and Talking Heads riffs? Never mind those dollops of your vinyl collection nonchalantly messing with your head as they pass by - Chrome Hoof get away with anything they want because they lay down the toughest, hardest, tightest groove anywhere. (Ok, Battles’ John Stanier might be a good match). It’s absolutely nailed, frogmarching you to the dancefloor whether they’re sounding like Gong or Gloria Gaynor, a gloriously confident rhythm section that powers through complex proggy flourishes and hi-hat-fabulous disco relentless, without prejudice or crashing the gears. Accompanied by a big-band collective of musicians including violin and cello and masterful female voices that shift from seventies soul to growling metal, brothers Leo and Milo Smee built Chrome Hoof around their preternaturally locked-in bass and drumming; Milo coming from a dance/rave background and Leo - bassist in Cathedral - the unashamed metaller. Both could trace their tastes back to a common ancestor: space-obsessed cultish bands of the seventies, the P-Funk of George Clinton, the complex, colourful mythologies of Sun Ra and no doubt Magma (in particular their uncompromising but equally accessible and danceable Attahk). But you could pick out plenty of oddly familiar (and not-so-familiar) mnemonics out of every track, tiny splashes of dub, a Yes bassline, a chunk of doom-thrash: the important thing is that somehow they work as a whole. An enormously enjoyable whole - every track is uplifting, zinging through your system like a shot of espresso, effortlessly dazzling with excursions into madness. Chrome Hoof’s accompanying silver-foil hat sci-fi live insanity is, pleasingly, part and parcel of the whole deal, part of a noble tradition of eccentricity, of playing in a band that’s verging on a religious cult. I doubt if the musicians get fined or beaten for wrong notes in Chrome Hoof - they sound like they’re reveling in what they’re playing. This is gleeful, good-time stuff. And any worries that it’s a send-up are washed away by its loving enthusiasm for its myriad sources, and the way they come together as an incomparably ballsy whole. Pre-Emptive False Rapture is for real - true Other Galactic Funk