3. It Rips Off The Theme Tune From 'Cagney and Lacey' (Twice) and Only Features Three Good Songs
Whilst deeply flawed, RAM, it should be remembered, includes some fine music. 'Get Lucky' was a fitting soundtrack to the summer (thankfully reducing the airtime given to a certain Pharrell-featuring ode to sexual assault) and even after being played to death its winning blend of human/robot vocals, jutting Chic guitar and languid, loose-limbed funk rarely fail to radiate a warm boogie glow. 'Lose Yourself to Dance', whilst perhaps a little over-long, is a well-judged follow-up single, trading the warm hues of its predecessor for slap bass-driven, stone-cold shimmer. Penultimate track 'Doin' It Right', a collaboration with Panda Bear - aka Animal Collective's Noah Lennox - is arguably the one song on that isn't completely in thrall to the past: Lennox's multi-layered, Beach Boys-esque vocal serving as an affecting human counterpoint to the primitive trap beat which kicks below it. The remainder of the record is less rewarding. As noted by the Glaswegian comedian Brian Limond (more commonly known as Limmy) in his hilarious live video review of the record, at least two songs - 'Bring Life Back to Music' and 'Fragments of Time' - include melodic hooks which sound uncannily like they've been lifted from the theme of 80's cop show 'Cagney and Lacey'. (Seemingly a series of great influence amongst French producers, given that Breakbot's 'One Out of Two' owes a debt to the same source). Elsewhere, 'The Game of Love' is flacid soft porn muzak, closer 'Contact' a mash-up of a NASA sample and an outtake from Jeff Wayne's 'The War of the Worlds' score, and 'Giorgio by Moroder' a glib exercise in self-reflexivity, unworthy of the Italian synth maestro's name.