All That Must Be - George Fitzgerald

Track list:

1. Two Moons Under
2. Frieda
3. Burns
4. Roll Back
5. Siren Calls
6. Nobody But You (feat. Hudson Scott)
7. Outgrown
8. Half-Light (Night Version)
9. The Echo Forgets
10. Passing Trains

Running time: 44 minutes
Released: 2018

Another "A" insert here, and this one a real punt as I have no other touchpoint for George Fitzgerald. This was a recommendation when I was buying All Melody, and I heard a couple of samples on the storefront, said "sod it" and chucked it into the order. I've not listened to it yet, either. What's it like?

It opens with some street sounds, but they give way quickly to a synth-led structure creating a crucible like space for a top end that is... really odd. Words fail me, so moving on it garners a videogame soundtrack feel. The strange indescribable sounds aside, it has has something, but perhaps its thrust doesn't really sit well with me for a studied listen.

Reading up a little as the second track kicks in, it seems that Fitzgerald is much more club focused than I would have thought from this offering. My intersection with dance music is slim, but I have a fair amount of low-key electronica and that's where my head went when I heard the marketing samples, and why I picked it up on a whim. I suppose the fact I'm listening to this after dark on a Saturday means I got the timing right, but I am so uninterested in the club scene, and was similarly so in my youth. However my view of what gets played was skewed by that which made the radio and TV back when that mattered. This doesn't seem to share a lot of DNA with that guff from 20 years back.

There's more soft sounds, there's less repetitive "banging beats" and more growth within the tune. Crucially there's no paper thin plastic vocal on this either. I can't see how you'd dance to this, it just appeals to me in a more reflective way. But then I couldn't dance to anything, so what do I know?!

Where there are vocals, they are the weakest part of the compositions. And for all that I am finding the tunes to have some interest, they are also dragging. Roll Back has only just started, none of the three tracks before it are over-long and the whole disc is only 44 minutes but it feels like I have been going a while. So it's fair to say that I'm not falling wildly for it on first exposure. With that said, I'm not bouncing off it either. Any repellent effect that I get from the vocal segments is made up for by an interest in how he's constructed his loops and beats.

It's the most purely electronic, sci-fi-esque beeps and blips that appeal the most. They carry a familiarity from 10s of game soundtracks over the years, without being that at all. I have a frame of reference for it, even if it is not a reference the artist was consciously calling on (not that I would know). I can picture neon-lit streets of future dystopia, pulsing space-station bars, ship-stealing heist missions and more. I think this is why the vocal sections throw me for a loop; the music of my references rarely contains those elements.

Perhaps what surprises me the most is the volume level. It's not amped right up, but pitched lower. This allows for some more subtle sounds to be fused into the mix without getting swallowed whole. It's a world away from late nineties and early 2000s radio dance tracks that I recall (perhaps through stereotype-enforcing goggles, to be fair!). 

There are times when it flies closer to those themes, though thus far even the most egregious of them has been mitigated by the general volume level and the low contrast between elements. 

I think Outgrown must have been one of the samples I heard online, there's a keyboard line in there adding a nice bit of melody. It's a little bit swallowed in the hailstorm of electronics and the constant halo of the structural pulses, but it's there as a little beacon of calm, and the overall effect is nice, even if the track is probably a little busier than I would like in an ideal world. This listen is the last act of the day, a day in which I have been productive but felt completely listless away from the moments of key activity. 

There are two tracks to go and having just seen off what I suspect is the weakest offering on the album I am not expecting much from them beyond carrying on the general ambience of the disc. I can't say this is going to jump into regular rotation or become a favourite, but it's also not been an instant rejection either. There are enough soft edges here to make it good for reflection, switch off and relaxation, even when it is at its busiest. In time I might want to cut the more vocal-heavy tracks back, but I think even they deserve at least a second listen.