Eight Oh Eight

Chronique

The final installment in an ostensible trilogy including Black Devil's 1978 debut -- a recently resuscitated, much ballyhooed Euro-disco obscurity -- and its long-delayed 2006 follow-up, 28 After, Eight Oh Eight offers few surprises for fans of the enigmatic outfit's dark, mechanical, analog boogie magic. It's definitely cut from the same cloth as the first two records, which makes it at once unabashedly retro and at the same time not at all unusual-sounding in 2008 -- producer Bernard Fevre could easily be mistaken here for one of his numerous latter-day imitators. But where 28 After felt perhaps too rigidly informed by the model of its precursor (that is, if it didn't consist wholly or partially of decades-old recordings to begin with), this installment finds Fevre flexing a bit more range. As a result, Eight Oh Eight is probably the loosest, most varied (both from track to track and within each track), and funkiest Black Devil release -- even if those distinctions are fairly slight. The production here is notably slicker, though, which is not especially a positive development: the record sounds more modern, but it's also a lot more faceless, lacking much of the amateurish charm and quirkiness which made the first two albums so endearing to out-disco acolytes. The distinctive voodoo doo wop vocals still crop up now again -- particularly on "Never No Dollars" and the curious, uncharacteristically near-pretty closer "For Hoped" -- but more of the musical interest, such as it is, comes from fairly standard percussion breakdowns and squelchy synth assaults. While Eight Oh Eight, in general, does little to displease Black Devil's followers, it suggests that, diabolical as he may be, he's still subject to the law of diminishing returns.

© K. Ross Hoffman /TiVo