Bubbling under! Kosmetika's debut album, Pop Soap, the latest wonder off the Melbourne conveyor belt works a different seam from much of the rest of that most prolific pop mine. Taking Krautrock, Soviet iconography as its starting points rather than Flying Nun, it sprinkles melodic confectionery across the synth bedrock to ragged effect.
As with so many of their contemporaries, Program, Possible Humans, Courtney, The Vacant Smiles, to name the most immediate handful, Kosmetika are an inventive bunch, mixing up New Wave, early Blur, Stereolab and no little of themselves to highly pleasing effect. Much of this is deliberately not fully formed, many of the songs have a demo-ish quality. Not that this matters a bit. Kosmetika's trump card, Veeka Nazarova, one of the band's singers hailing from Khabarovsk Russia adds a distinctive Glasnost quality to proceedings.
Kraftneau, the four minute single that came before the album is the pick of the bunch, good enough to slot in seamlessly on Mars Audiac Quintet or Emperor Tomato Ketchup, but there's much else here that almost fulfils its promise. Pop Soap is all too brief a pleasure, perhaps slightly short of a full album, but while it plays it works up a proper lather.
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