Reviewer: Brian (Customer) - Posted on the metamatic forum

These are both excellent albums well worth a listen. TMPEOTY is the more unusual of the two. In places its like an electro audio book concept album. Obvious influences are the Beatles, Kate Bush's Ariel and also some of bits remind of Bjork. The exception which breaks the album up is the song "Turning into Everything" (which is on the This Air CD single). Guitars on this remind me a bit of Joy Division/New Order. TMPEOTY took me on a journey I didnt expect & is wonderful. There are also some vocal ambient nods in John Foxx's direction.

Many of the tracks on E.S.T are very familiar to me from Louis Myspace page over the last year or so. Favourites so far are the very catchy "Crash That Car" also "With my Magic Eye" & of course the fantastic "This Air", (here available in its longer more housy sounding original version).

Once again I must mention the excellent packaging & graphics.

These albums are a must buy for any Gordon fan & their appeal also goes well beyond that.

Brian

Reviewer: Chris C (Customer) - Posted on the metamatic forum

E.S.T, Louis' third album and his best so far. It is a grower with "This Air" and "Thunderbirds Alright" as the stand out tracks. "Crash That Car" and "Occupants" are also some of the great tracks you can find on this album.

It's not a heavily synth based album but electrical though. I like the use of the vocoder in some of the tracks.

The Motion Picture Event Of The Year is an album in it's own right and would make a pretty good soundtrack to any movie. It's very entertaining with "The Opening Scene" as my favourite so far.

Louis is a prolific songwriter and has many more good tunes waiting to be unleashed from his hard disc. I hope Toffeetones continue to release his stuff.

10 out of 10 to Toffeetones for presentation.

Well done all! Chris

Reviewer: David Blackwell (Customer)

I've seen Louis Gordon playing with John Foxx live over the years but didn't realise he was releasing his own music until now. I bought EST on impulse as I liked what I heard on the preview clips on this site and thought the artwork looked pretty stunning.

I've had this album a few weeks now and I can safely say that the clips are nothing compared to how this incredible two and a half hours of music sound when you have it at home in all its glory.

This is one very classy release and deserves to be in anyone’s collection, regardless of how you stumbled across it. Of course other Foxx fans will find things in it that they like but I now realise that there’s a hell of a lot more to Louis Gordon than the collaboration work we’ve heard so far.

The artwork opens up like a gatefold sleeve and you can spend ages just looking at all the collages of what I assume are heroes from Gordon's past. Some of the faces are familiar, others less so. Perhaps a key with the names would have been handy but I guess there wasn't enough room with all that's already going on in the sleeves. Then again, you don't buy albums just for the artwork do you?

Musically, this is definitely a work of two parts. EST is very structured and more song based. It's also bloody clever. How the hell anyone is going to categorise this, God knows. Gordon's songs are so diverse that you could never get bored of listening to them. One after another they come at you sounding so different in style and execution to the last one. Perhaps this would put some people off if they want to sit down and hear similar stuff to set a mood but personally, I love the fact that his album is like some kind of trippy kaleidoscope of styles and influences.

EST starts off with Stretford Medders, a piece of guitar driven psychedelia that sounds like a Beatles out-take from the White Album. This is followed by the Crash That Car which is very current sounding with voices that sound like Japanese anime characters warning people about reckless driving. The title track Electric Shock Treatment is absolutely brilliant. To me it sounds a bit like something ELO would have done. The guitars and the strings have something to do with that but the harmonies are sublime on this, particularly at the end but thankfully more restrained than Jeff Lynne!

Skipping on a bit, Occupants is easily one of the tracks that will grab people straight away. The highlight of the album though has to be This Air. What a song… I love this one! I bought the single as well because of this track and I have to say, I prefer the remix to the album version. There’s not a lot in it but the single just sounds a bit more polished. Remixing was probably a wise move too because it’s a song that deserves to be played on the radio.

Thunderbirds Alright is definitely a nod back to the nineties rave scene, its like something by Altern 8 or bands of that ilk but like a lot of Gordon’s material, there’s an underlying sense of fun and irreverence here. Total contrast again, Dance With Me is a reprise of the earlier track Purple Dancer. This one sends the hairs on the back of your neck tingling. Based on a heartbeat with minimal synthesiser sounds and Gordon doing one of his best vocal performances, this is so haunting and genuinely moving. This is the point in the album when he lets you know things are winding down and he does it so skilfully. The final farewell is the lush cinematic atmosphere of Themostbeautifulmanintheworld. A perfect chill piece which hints toward the next album in the set… The Motion Picture Event Of The Year.

And that, is another story for when I have more time…

Reviewer: Jon Gordon (no relation) (www.tastyfanzine.org.uk)

I've said unkind things about electronica recently. About how it's got repetitive, predictable, about how no-one really seems to write songs anymore, unlike in the late 70s and 80s, in that far off and mysterious world that existed before sequencers were invented. Then along comes Louis Gordon with a full album, and we ought to listen, as Louis Gordon is best known for his work alongside John Foxx, who after he left the original Ultravox lineup wrote 'Underpass', 'Europe After The Rain', 'Your Dress' and others with which he enjoyed a degree of international success, around 25 years ago. Exactly what I've been complaining about.

Now, I think it's fair to say that I haven't heard an album like 'Electric Shock Treatment' for some time, and also that isn't quite the album I was expecting to hear. Not the blankly soulless wall-of-polyphony recreation of one or two of Kraftwerks more overbearing moments, nor an attempt to recover the more accessible side of early Ultravox: instead, 'Electric Shock Treatment' is a slightly patchy but oddly compelling display of controlled eccentricity that more closely resembles the Flaming Lips than any of those New Romantic mini-operettas.

So there are actual songs such as the title track and 'Dance With Me'; then there are semi-instrumentals like 'Stretford Meders' and 'Crash That Car', and spoken word pieces where Louis tells us about the day he saw a flying saucer, or what happened when he went fishing ('Occupants' and 'Strawberrymaggots forever'). As I said, Flaming Lips enthusiasts will find 'Electric Shock Treatment' of some interest, while anyone old enough to remember the 80s can play 'spot the arpeggio' as Louis recreates some of the headier moments of OMD, Soft Cell, and indeed Ultravox. Had Syd Barrett been a member of Depeche Mode, this is how 'The Madcap Laughs' might've sounded.