Pictureplane – Thee Physical (2011) [Lovepump United] // Grade: A-

Remember when nightlife used to be genuinely fun, every single time you went out? Before you cared how flawless the DJ’s mixing skills were, who you might see that night, and the concept of fatigue had not yet entered your brainspace. We all grow up, and most of us grow jaded along the way. Thankfully, there’s people making music like Pictureplane (Denver’s Travis Egedy), who haven’t lost their sense of youthful abandon there to remind us how freedom feels, when you check your judgements at the door and lose yourself in the beat.

Egedy’s latest LP Thee Physical is one half acidic dance party, the other half end of the night euphoric bliss. He jumbles together samples with breathless vocals and a seemingly endless supply of synth effects, creating compositions with an almost mash-up quality about them. A simple keyboard melody begins opener “Body Mod,” but nothing remains singular across Thee Physical for very long, and seconds later the notes are spliced by a sample of Wild Child’s “Renegade Master,” then explode into a machine clack, synth-pop dance-off. With so many sounds in play at any given moment, the album ends up listening much like a mix; the compositions together form a seamless web of sci-fi goth synth-pop house music, that’s unavoidably danceable.

Underneath it’s colorful, feet-moving party exterior, Thee Physical is also extremely sensual, and that’s what is unique about Pictureplane’s music. Egedy gets the larger relationship between the physical and the emotional; that a voice is capable of moving a body in a different way. His breathless whisper runs throughout the album wrapping the punctuated beats in sexual closeness. The tracks where vocals take center stage are some of the album’s best. “Post Physical” listens like an intimate post-sex conversation under the covers, toes touching, the late afternoon light filtering through blinds. “Real Is a Feeling” casts a dancefloor spell, with that intoxicating blend of upbeat rhythm and pop melody, that turns everyone in close company more attractive, and pulls bodies close to strangers.

Thee Physical is like nothing else you’ve heard. Synth party pop for the misfits, the weirdos, the queers, and anyone else who arrives with an open mind, looking for a good time. Haters not welcome.

- Scrooge McFuck