Sophie Du Palais ‎– Endurance Of Pain Is The Power Of Being

German national, Amsterdam based artist Sophie Du Palais has already turned ears and heads via the likes of Dekmantal Recordings, and now delivers her debut album which is – for want of a better phrase – a wonderful kind of head fuck. It’s menacing, it’s mean, it’s uninviting, it’s compelling, it’s hook-y, it’s electro-synth-pop-industrial-EBM-slow-mo-broken-rave-weirdness that defines the phrase ‘ear worm’.

Opening with ‘Slow Steady Cum’, a track that invokes a chemsex party running at halftime, the sparse and rather psychedelic synth work can’t prepare us for ‘Glazed Disco Ball’, a relentlessly building noise bomb that seems to sound alarms from every direction, Du Palais’ Anglo-Germanic vocals adding an East Berlin warehouse vibe to proceedings. Coupled with the sinister waves of electro on ‘Boys Tears’, ‘Up To No Good»s wide load sledgehammer beats, and the pure dance floor grit of ‘2001’ and you’ve got a winner.