LOVE AND ROCKETS: “Hot Trip To Heaven” (Beggars Banquet)

DANIEL ASH has cut his hair – short – and bought a pair of shades. So have his former Bauhaus cohorts, David J. and Kevin Haskins. They have also produced what, after a five year break, is their most mature and cohesive work to date.

This has got to be the sex album of the year. The overall feeling is one of sheer throbbing sensuality; but musically we’re looking at a highly individual hybrid of techno, trance, ambient, world and industrial which defies description but demands a listening.

Unlike the hair, the tracks have grown longer and the tonal range broader, on an album which finally confirms that there’s a lot more to L’n’R than vast racks of effects, hairspray and having all been in Bauhaus once. Some of Ash’s guitarwork is blindingly brilliant – surprisingly so. One could draw rough comparisons with Fripp or Manzanera, though the shaping of sound owes more to Eno and his bank of analogue synths than any player of stringed instruments.

David J. meanwhile is leaning heavily towards dub, working slickly with drummer Haskins to maintain an insistent sense of threat or promise. Whichever it is, the result is very, very sexy. The inspired inclusion of Transatlantic Underground’s Natacha Atlas is largely responsible for the world and ethnic feel to the album. Her warm percussion and occasional wailings confirm a warmly organic human element on the proceedings, contrasting well with Ash’s voice – otherworldly as ever.

Oh, and only two tracks are of less than five minutes’ duration and four are longer than seven minutes. Plenty of time to get into a groove. From the start, you know you’re listening to seduction music par excellence. Ash is, after all, one of the few men who have managed to combine fishnets and eyeliner with thrust and grind. The Orb occasionally springs to mind, particularly during the first track, a 14 minute version of the single, ‘Body And Soul’. Insistently trancey, the rhythm section conspires to hit you in the hips. Frequent E users be warned: your body may well start flashbacking.

‘This Heaven’, with its breathy female panting and cooing and thrust beat must be the nineties answer to Donna Summer’s awesome dancefloor hit ‘I Feel Love’, as the more enlightened club DJs in London have already realised. Released as a single in the more appreciative USA, it insists you do something pleasurable with your body and won’t take no for an answer. But is it sex trance dub or hardbeat world trance?

L’n’R have been dogged from the start by accusations of plagiarism, Hot Trip To Heaven demonstrates why. More than a little reminiscent of Bolan in Twentieth Century Boy mode plus a twinge of Jim Foetus, it’s still a fuck-off hard dance track and not anything you can picture Murphy getting his precious vocal chords round, either.

Put simply, if Hot Trip To Heaven doesn’t make your body want to dance or make love (or both) you’re dead.

• Fay Wolftree