I Am Not a Doctor

1998 second album from Moloko, an electronic music duo happy to step outside everyone else’s musical comfort zones, and with songs strong enough to do so with considerable aplomb. I Am Not A Doctor features lots of left-field dance club tunes, futurised-funk songs and oddball electronica, often drawing on dance music but reinterpreting it through Moloko’s uniquely warped filter, twisting established genre elements into unfamiliar shapes. Opener “The Flipside” is jaunty, cocky drum & bass-lite with a sultry vocal that provides several memorable hooks over its 4 minutes, and “Pretty Bridges” and “Blink” also use d&b rhythms as the basis for Róisín Murphy’s swaggering vocals. “Sorry” is an entirely different euro-synth-wave mood with emotionless robotised vocals over some chilly new wave synths and rigid drum box beats, while “The I.D.”’s queasy sample-tech-R’n’B recalls Funkadelic’s psychedelic leanings, updated via the very latest in studio tech and production chops. It’s supa-fresh, dayglo, spiky, sensual and above all, consistently interesting.