A recent release reviewed

THE HACKER
Reves Mecaniques/Goodlife/PIAS
**

When Hacker Michel Amato gets around to finishing Reves Mecaniques, it will be worth hearing. As it stands, the Grenoble native's second album is a frustrating series of sketches, ideas and premature endings, with none of the ambition, direction, dynamism or dark humour that attracted listeners to his side the first time out. Occasionally, Amato tries his hand at some potentially interesting Kraftwerk-style instrumentals (parts of Sequenced Life, for instance), but he lacks the vision or patience to actually stay on the autobahn. Hacker foil Caroline "Miss Kittin" Herve's contributions are limited to a few insipid, deadpan lines about the "blank generation" on Masterplan, and the less said about these the better. Amato flirts with 1980s pop, acid-electro, cinematic atmospherics, Euro-tech and even steely minimalism, but ultimately nothing sticks. Mediocre.
www.goodlife-ozone.com
Jim Carroll