Album excerpts:

"A Piece of False Morality"

"I Can Thrill and Delight"

"I Hadn't Screwed Around Before"

Click here to order it via Discograph; digital downloads will be available via Amazon shortly.

In Flagranti : Brash & Vulgar
released on Codek Records
reviewed by Gaspar Oliveira for GBH.tv

You can always count on In Flagranti. Ever since their first single, "Day In Day Out," was released back in 2002, Sasa Crnobrnja and Alex Gloor have been one of dance music's most reliable duos, pushing efficient dancefloor smut of consistently high quality. In fact, the only complaint one could've made about In Flagranti, and it would've been a stretch, was that there wasn't enough of their cut-and-paste disco-punk-funk-glamrock to go around; the pair averaged only a few singles a year for the first few years of their existence, and their debut album, Wronger Than Anyone Else, was largely comprised of earlier work, previously available only on vinyl.

But lately, that complaint's starting to look out of date; In Flagranti had a huge year in 2008, releasing six EPs of original material and what seemed like dozens of remixes, some official, some not. So when Brash & Vulgar, their second full-length album, showed up in my mailbox a few weeks ago, I half-expected it to be like their first, a victory lap full of pre-existing work.

It's nice to be wrong sometimes. Brash & Vulgar is totally new, a non-stop sleazefest that takes the elements that made past In Flagranti releases so great - the biting, grimy hi-hats ("She Bent Each Leg Alternately," "A Piece of False Morality"), the seedy disco samples and perverse, suggestive vocal drops ("I Can Thrill and Delight"), the blown-out, distorted drums ("Black and Grey Striped Trousers") - and improves them with better sequencing and a slightly expanded range of influences. Where Wronger Than Anyone Else felt nearly overwhelming at times, Brash & Vulgar has more balance, and it moves with a sense of purpose through three distinct sections: a bracing, appealingly off-balance mix of space disco and art-punk, humid, perverted disco and glam rock, and nervy, but spacey techno and Italo disco.

The latter portion, for obvious reasons, takes its sweet time, with each track rolling and echoing over the five minute mark, but the rest of the record gets to the point: the remaining 8 tracks go by in a quick 27 minutes. In Flagranti took a risk in slicing pure dance music down into pop song sizes - tracks like "Pick a Trick" and "A Piece of False" Morality" have a demented pop magic to go with their dancefloor functionality - and incredibly, they pulled it off. The DJs who follow In Flagranti's work closely might find that disappointing, but maybe Brash & Vulgar is the opposite of Wronger Than Anyone Else: a sign of things to come from one of the hardest-working duos in the game. Let's hope I'm not wrong about this.

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