LUH - Beneath the Concrete

Everything about LUH aims to be gigantic. The essence of the project - sky-reaching, enlivening industrialism - has been amplified since Ellery Roberts and Ebony Hoorn started making music. They’ve recruited The Haxan Cloak for additional production, and they’ve defined their name as meaning “Lost Under Heaven”. Aiming big would be an understatement. LUH use drama and darkness as their fuel, before taking lift off.‘Beneath the Concrete’ is direct, hard-hitting from the off. But it fails to match the unifying sweetness of previous swoon ‘I&I;’. Like Depeche Mode plunged into a grimy abyss, synth pop rarely sounds so complex and hook-stuffed at the same time. Everyday chancers can’t pull this off, and no doubt about it, LUH come close. If anything, this matches the strange anthemia of Crystal Castles, submerging melody in so much noise it cannot cope. Half the time, this plan works a charm. The other half, it falls flat. LUH haven’t quite perfected their strikerate.