A brief spell of hysterical, horror-movie organ (“Turn Up the Ghosts Part I”). A percussive pitter-patter atop a xylophone (“!Um!Hot.”) Aside from these brief forays, and perhaps one or two others, Dat’r’s first release, Turn Up the Ghosts, could almost be considered one song with some key changes, not truly a detriment as surely its creators had this in mind. I thought of the alternative title, Just Keep Going.

The LP’s eighth track, “Bloody Lump,” throbbing like novacaine, is the first to deviate from its predecessor in any significant way. While still a song that wants to dance and will hectically claim “The city is a bee sting,” the thick xylophone hints at a lullaby, the song a pulsing bright shot of fireflies in the club.

Ghosts gives the impression of the duo comprising Dat’r in the midst of a short but productive and intense week or month of songwriting and recording. Perhaps the songs are not dissimilar enough that we needed nine of them, but the album’s sincerely relentless pursuit of a driving force for dancing people while also complimenting the dance with atmosphere and a melodic presence is laudable. It’s a party they’re throwing, after all, and are only interested in the one question, Can you dance to it?

The LP’s conundrum and perhaps a source of its off-kilter likability is the curious decision to leave the vocals largely uneffected admist an album of processed, manipulated instruments and sounds. They appear out of place (not necassarily to the music’s denegration), so straightforward, unsullied, earnest. It’s a little odd or didactic at times, I shrug, but it moves me.

“Choice Cuts in Sauce,” Ghosts’ final and most interesting song, sounds like the brother-from-another-mother to Air’s Moon Safari, Dat’r’s keyboard sound necassarily an homage, conscious or no. Without attempting to top the rest of the record in intensity the song, the only one that doesn’t dance, improves whatever came before it, so that Ghosts is always tugging you back. Just keep going.