Happy Meals - Apero (CD)

Facts Happy Meals is the Glasgow-based duo of Suzanne Rodden and Lewis Cook, life-partners since high school finding expression in cosmic form. Originally from the Scottish borders, Rodden and Cook (also of the Cosmic Dead) began Happy Meals in a flurry of experimentation at Glasgow's creative hub the Green Door Studio. Initially the result of a free music production course, Apéro sees the pair embark on a blissful voyage into a love-fueled, outward-looking hedonism. Both artists operate machines and sing but it's the dominating Franco-Scottish lingua-franca of Suzanne Rodden that imbues a sense of seductive fun to the album. Their first recorded statement, Apéro is an instant rush of Kosmiche-disco, utterly addictive and inviting. The epic "Crystal Salutation" welcomes the listener in with analogue synthesizers delayed into the horizon before "Electronic Disco" ushers in distorted drum machines and Rodden's disco-at-sunset vocal. Album stand-out "Altered Images" is a pop-masterpiece, mixing French / Italo disco, acid basslines and a sense of Scottish optimism. "Age of Love" is unabashedly the feeling of being up until daybreak, with layered synthesizers climaxing all-around. Retro-futuristic visions abound on the beat-less "Visions of Utopia" before closer "Le Voyage" reprises back the cosmopolitan disco, playing out the perfect club night in ecstatic fashion. It's an enchanting, inclusive vision; everyone is invited, the future is bright. Just say yes.