Marina * Electra Heart LP

Vinyl LP pressing. 2012 release, the sophomore album from Welsh singer songwriter Marina Lambrini Diamandis AKA Marina & The Diamonds. Electra Heart is not so much a creative leap forward, more an Olympian pole-vault over the bar of talented-newcomer into the global amphitheater of a cultivated Classic. Two years on from her top 5 debut The Family Jewels, the self-styled avant-garde D.I.Y artist has detonated her own experimental past and landed feet first in the future with Electra Heart, a stunningly ambitious, seamless, cohesive and confident sonic pulsar spinning between electro-pop euphoria and come-down melancholia. The album is produced by a cache of old school and A-List producers: Dr Luke (Katy Perry) and Liam Howe (Sneaker Pimps) but mostly (nine out of 12 songs) Greg Kurstin (Lily Allen, Kylie) and Rick Nowels (Madonna, Stevie Nicks, Lykke LI).