If you're one of those lucky souls blessed with the gift of synesthesia (a condition in which the hearing of a sound may cause the listener to visualize a colour), you may not feel so lucky when listening to this album. What you'll picture in your mind's eye when you hear Darkdancer is the worst music video you've ever seen: feather-haired folks in red leather jackets with a surfeit of diagonal zippers wandering through a landscape of fluorescent geometric shapes. At … mehrthe climax, everything moves in slow motion. Welcome back to the 1980s. Les Rhythmes Digitales, a.k.a. Jacques Lu Cont (an Englishman despite the name), digs that woebegone decade enough to make up for everyone else's lack of enthusiasm. On what is for all intents and purposes his debut, he's aimed his arsenal of vintage analog synths at your nostalgia and pleasure zones. The result is a smooth tour of eurythmic bass lines, vocoderizations, and a guest appearance from Canadian big-in-the-U.K., 80s singer Nik Kershaw. Considering how gimmicky the conception is, it's a surprisingly amenable listen from start to finish, though only on the astonishing single "Jacques Your Body (Make Me Sweat)" does he tweak his source material enough to make clear he's capable of keeping some distance from his silliest indulgences. --Jeff Salamon weniger