Watching the Icelandic band Fufanu was perhaps the highlight of my Great Escape last year. That three-day new music extravaganza is ostensibly a showcase for both new music fans and industry types, and by and large you get bands going that extra yard, with the thought of deals and breaks in the back of their collective minds. With the extraordinary frontman Kaktus Einarsson appearing possessed, standing aloft stage monitors, staring aggressively into the crowd, and with a band of mean and moody looking Icelandic hombres behind him, the sound and spectacle was intense, yet hugely invigorating. Indeed, Einarsson and drummer Erling Bang (who has recently become a full time member of the band) bonded brilliantly, the singer shaking furiously in front of the maelstrom being created on the kit. They may look outwardly menacing and slightly unhinged, but musically they mean business; a magnificently dark post-punk soundscape with electronica-a-plenty, a krautrock vibe here and there, and even a smidgen of a more melancholic Blur, whose leader Damon Albarn has publicly taken a shine to the band.

While their debt album Few More Days To Go was a more guitar orientated affair, Sports sees Fufanu pull in more of their early sound, when they were a duo (Kaktus Einarsson and guitarist/programmer Guðlaugur Einarsson), a predominately voiceless, techno orientated outfit. And it’s a leap forward for them, the band truly finding their feet with a sound that, while drawing upon the past, is resolutely in the here and now. It’s a fresh, exciting and often mesmerising concoction that has been produced by the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Nick Zinner.

Sports in title but, in reality the album really isn’t about sports at all, despite the rather intriguing and enigmatic video of the title track and single, a six minute film of Iceland’s youth doing track and field activities in slow motion, with some obviously un-sporty types (the band) in the mix. ‘Sports’ extols the delights of being young and carefree, helped along by the pulsing bass-driven electronica grooves, accompanied by Cure-esque guitar, and a droning vocal. It’s like Neu! meets Joy Division, down some psychedelic byways.

Crucially, and throughout Sports, there is more than enough dynamic and tempo variations, and tonal shifts. For instance, ‘Gone For More’ presents itself as a minor throwback to the raw, incessant and analog-driven synths of new wave pioneers Suicide, allied to a pounding four-to-the-floor beat, arpeggio guitar and trancy bleeps, eventually locking into a very dance floor friendly groove. It’s fantastically inventive stuff, that effortlessly combines post punk, new wave, Goa trance and krautrock. ‘Tokyo’ then slows it down, settling in where Joy Division meets The Cure, again locking into a hypnotising rhythm, tripping out towards the end, as does ‘White Pebbles’, which eventually rides on a deep bassline along with psychedelic analog synths; a sound that luxuriates in its own bubble bath of 50 shades of muted technicolor.

‘Just Me’ is propulsed along by a powerful bass, post punk and new wave influences obviously apparent, as they are in ‘Liability’, Einarsson taking on a Devo-esque vocal amidst the new wave swagger of the song that concerns, according to the singer, “our responsibility as a dot in society… that people (the younger generation) don’t care about their society because their life is going all right and they are numb towards the existence of the society.” The dark and languid ‘Bad Rockets’ similarly concerns itself with fighting hierarchies, ditching the bad rockets as it were, those who are in control.

Towards the end of Sports we get a couple of surprises. Firstly with the Steve Mason sounding, fragile psych-pop of ‘Your Fool’: “I want you to hold me like i’m a fool / We’ll sleep on the back of the new moon,” sings Kaktus, while closer ‘Restart’ is the closest we get to a pop song.

There is ultimately a big beating heart beneath the icy veneer of Sports. Their superficially dark menace is counteracted by pulsing grooves and bewitching rhythms and textures within the subtle tension building of their music. It’s a tension that never explodes or springs back, but which has a meditative, mildly euphoric, even romantic quality throughout. And it’s one that rewards repeated listens.

Jeff Hemmings

Website: fufanu.net
Facebook: facebook.com/fufanumusic
Twitter: fufanumusic.tumblr.com