Thursday 15 March 2012

The 2kDozen 500: #104 - High Places, "Original Colors"

Widdershins: not a word I hear enough in the pop oeuvre. But here it is, in the first couple of lines. The Depeche Mode like bass pulse isn't far behind, and my ears are fully pricked up. That's "Year Off".

"The Pull" is busy and echoing in a similar way to Burial. "Morning Ritual" has been sturdy rhythms and a hint of Augustus Pablo in the melodica-like noise moving about behind. Ironically the only lyric I can catch is "Words resounding around my head". Nice tension to the beats on "Banksia" and they crumble off the ear beautifully. I'm thinking about Aphex's Selected Ambient Works.


The vocals are quite soft, secondary to the beats - which I don't have a problem with. Sultriest yet is the semi-molten "Ahead Stop", which doesn't bother with vocals at all. I can hear the rummaging beats melting and blurring in the heat of their own success. I've seen the word Weatherall in reviews and I can hear a low-end community, though they aren't as (brilliantly) show-off as AW.

I suppose this is part of that House revival sound like Azari & III (which I found out is pronounced "and Third" yesterday FYI) have been plastering about. It's very welcome as far as I'm concerned. All those introverted music types such as myself who wished these spacious, exploratory sounds had hung around for longer in the first place. "Dry Lake" sounds just as it describes: a contradiction full of empty space. Worth any hosepipe ban.


"Sonora" is fractured with dub-ness.  "Sophia" feels right back in the kind of Future Sound of London times, all fractal and Hyperlogic and dense with optimism. I get the idea that "Twenty-Seven" might be about rock stars dying at the correct age; but I can't pick anything out of the rounded singing. The last icing-sugar-sweet word might be "hate".

Why doesn't everyone make albums that sound at least a bit like this? It's lovely and you can dance to you effortlessly. Let's all make one know ti to cheer ourselves up and nudge ourselves nearer the Moon.

Rating: Dynamics out of Soft & High

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVQl-3fiZ6Y