Acquired Taste. Somehow, looking back, it seems that I haven't used that expression very often on TLOBF. I've probably tried to skirt round and avoid it, replace it with something else, as it can sound like a bit of a cop-out. In the case of this album by Icelandic techno outfit GusGus though, I feel backed into a corner, like I've no choice by to deploy that phrase. Why? Broadly speaking, because I feel that there's probably an extremely limited audience for this, limited even in techno circles, I would imagine. Which perhaps makes 24/7 a double acquired taste...The most striking thing about this album is not the first listen but the first glance at the tracklisting. Here we have only six tracks, ranging from under four minutes at the short end of the spectrum to almost twelve, at the long end. The other four songs are very much concentrated towards the long end, I ought to add. This is slow, bassy, extremely drawn out minimal techno. Each of the tracks is entertaining enough at the beginning, but in every case, they never resolve or go anywhere. I'm not suggesting that's neccesary, but it grates nonetheless when so much of our time is being demanded here. The basic template consists of throbbing bass, overlaid with synths and the odd bit of vocals, which are intermittent at most. It's very stripped down and often languid, meaning that these songs just drag on and on and on - even the shorter ones. In fact most of these songs feel as though they were written to length in the way that Meat Loaf records are written to title - here, much of the space if filled up with complete nothingness, as if the canvas was just too big.Even that does not inherently make this a bad album. Languid, throbbing music can be great, and I can well see certain club audiences enjoying these tracks if they were played extremely loudly in that very specific club environment. But in the home environment, there's very little chance of getting any pleasure from 24/7 without getting a warning for noise offences. On this record GusGus can't lean on the lyrics (bland), structures (dull), or vocals (mediocre). You wouldn't expect them to, you'd expect them to lean on the sounds. It is these then, that really cripple this set of tracks. There's unlikely to be a single smidgen of sound here that you haven't heard before. The synths are stunningly ordinary and run-of-the-mill - there's just no dynamism to them at all, and the beats are of the most off-the-shelf type imaginable.For the vast majority of people, 24/7 will prove to be an intensely alienating and interminably dull listen. For a very select and small group of techno fans, it may be just the ticket. You could say... it's an acquired taste.GusGus on Myspace