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Discovery is the project of Rostam Batmanglij and Wes Miles, friends who began together in the summer of 2005. One year later they had committed themselves to their respective bands, Vampire Weekend and Ra Ra Riot, but nonetheless continued to record together when they both found themselves in the same city. The project is many things: it's partly an attempt to realize Wes's concept of a band where everyone plays synthesizers, and of Rostam's concept for an album where handclaps keep the backbeat instead of snares drums. It's an embrace and also a commentary on the pop music of the past decade, of booming 808 bass and jittery sixteenth note high-hats; Elements of European electronic dance music skittering in double-time over steady R&B. If soul music is secularized, sexualized gospel, Discovery is an attempt to see if soul music can survive being plasticized, roboticized, quantized, chopped, and finally, screwed. The album features Rostam and Wes each singing half the songs and guest vocals from Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig (on `Carby') and Dirty Projectors' Angel Deradoorian (`I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend') BBC Review ---------- On LP ( a great name for an album) Vampire Weekend keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij and Ra Ra Riot singer Wes Miles have teamed up to produce a predictably urbane but unexpectedly electro record. It may not be the most anticipated album of the year, but this New York state indie collaboration is surely the coolest. Too often side projects wilt pitifully under the glare of fan pressure but this project has a head start on two prescient counts. Most poignantly, there is a fantastic cover of The Jackson 5's I Want You Back, recorded way before their most famous member died. This version has an industrial electro throb reminiscent of Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak album and featherlight synth flourishes to accompany Miles' take on the familiar vocal. Use of Auto-Tune is also a hot topic and one that Discovery tackle head-on across the album. Jay-Z may have removed all trace of the audio processor from his forthcoming The Blueprint 3 and recorded a track entitled DOA (Death Of Auto-Tune) but these fellow NYC residents certainly haven't. Can You Discover? a slowed-down reversion of Ra Ra Riots Can You Tell?, combines the familiar vocal effect with a minimal beat with jaunty, pulsing synths. It's the soundtrack to Akon and Lil Wayne pretending to be pirates at the yacht club. I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend is even odder. Dirty Projectors' singer Angel Deradoorian and Miles croon like Nelly Furtado and a simpering lovelorn fool over Timbaland beats and Aphex Twin avant P-funk noise. Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig turns up for his own bout of Auto-Tune and distressed drum machine fun on Carby, a track which best sums up the album. It's fun, odd, full of great melodies, slightly euphoric, brilliantly, if strangely, produced and as pleasingly different as Steve Mason of The Beta Band's Black Affair project from 2008. Both albums were the work of talented men keen to show they could unleash engaging electro on their fans, but where Mason made a eerie stomp into the dark, Discover delight with iridescent summer cheer. --Lou Thomas Find more music at the BBC ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/syn//albumreviews/-/music/ ) This link will take you off in a new window