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| Track list: 1. Absence Heard, Presence Felt 2. An Announcement to Answer 3. Blow Your Horn 4. Bomb in a Trumpet Factory 5. Politick Society 6. Meet Me at the Pomegranate Tree 7. Sabor 8. Ticket to Know Where 9. Tell it Like You Mean it Running time: 38 minutes Released: 2006 |
Oh dear, after I savaged The 5th Exotic (I should really go back and make that a casualty; there is stuff I liked more that got cut) I am not expecting much from this. I have this disc as a freebie from an ex-colleague who left to return to her native Italy. I remember on the day I picked it up I was asked why (by someone else) and I did not have a strong answer then, nor do I now. Hopefully, a few more years peddling the shuffle will have the result improving. Time will tell; at least it is short at sub 40 minutes.
It opens with a whimsical sort of tune, which is actually not unpleasant but is rather... nothing. The sort of thing you might expect to play over a 30 second black and white clip on TV then never hear again. It has a backdated charm, but no substance to make that charm really appealing, and then it is gone. The title track is perhaps more of what I was expecting. The relative volume of the percussion and the shuffle over it are reversed from expectation (drums too loud) but otherwise it is pretty much on message. Instrumental loops and beats with no real direction. Shuffle at its core. The title of the album and the track is really at odds with the impression it gives. An Announcement to Answer is statement-like, demanding a response; pity the stridency and purpose of the phrase is missing from the tune it titles.
Blow Your Horn introduces a rapper - this seems to be an evolution of downtempo artists, to introduce vocals to their "chillout" music; I am pretty sure Bonobo has done the same post Animal Magic (another memory to be examined later on) and I have heard it with Kinobe too. Personally I am not a fan because the result falls between two stools: it is neither good hip-hop, nor relaxing enough to play up the main positives of downtempo material. And when the basis on to which the vocalist is grafted is shakily average anyway - as it is here - the effect is pretty poor. Thankfully it is not on every track, but still, the half way house may work for some, but in this case it is not somewhere I want to stay.
When the track started, I was feeling more positive about Bomb in a Trumpet Factory but the incessant nature of it ground me down and left me not keen. When a similarly over-strong and repetitive rhythm is also used as the backbone of the following track it pretty much rules that out too, even before the vocal starts - a song, truly - but well... there is a Latin theme here, and in that case I could be listening to something with more charm like Buena Vista Social Club. This is not that. The melodies are there but they are wholly suborned to a percussion that by now feels like it is trying to bore into my brain with a jackhammer; I do not appreciate that. Generally there is nothing to complain about with Latin rhythms and tunes - they are almost by definition unobjectionable - but somehow Quantic manage to make it so through the imbalance of the various component parts.
I do feel that the tunes here have more distinct character - both as a theme to the album and differences between the tracks - than those on The 5th Exotic, so that I guess is a mark in its favour. However thus far they have all had the exact same problem with the percussion being too loud relative to the rest of the music. Were the tracks rebalanced I could imagine myself keeping a couple of them, but as presented on this disc there is no interest in that at all. Sabor is the first track where the balance is even vaguely OK to my ear, but it is also 7 minutes long and far too repetitive for a large chunk of that time. The final two numbers (another rap-over-Latin and a rambling mishmash of dull electronica) do absolutely nothing to sway my mind, so the entirety of this disc is for the chop. Whilst I am at it I shall go back and do the same to the majority of the other album to put the lingering injustices to other cut records to bed.
It opens with a whimsical sort of tune, which is actually not unpleasant but is rather... nothing. The sort of thing you might expect to play over a 30 second black and white clip on TV then never hear again. It has a backdated charm, but no substance to make that charm really appealing, and then it is gone. The title track is perhaps more of what I was expecting. The relative volume of the percussion and the shuffle over it are reversed from expectation (drums too loud) but otherwise it is pretty much on message. Instrumental loops and beats with no real direction. Shuffle at its core. The title of the album and the track is really at odds with the impression it gives. An Announcement to Answer is statement-like, demanding a response; pity the stridency and purpose of the phrase is missing from the tune it titles.
Blow Your Horn introduces a rapper - this seems to be an evolution of downtempo artists, to introduce vocals to their "chillout" music; I am pretty sure Bonobo has done the same post Animal Magic (another memory to be examined later on) and I have heard it with Kinobe too. Personally I am not a fan because the result falls between two stools: it is neither good hip-hop, nor relaxing enough to play up the main positives of downtempo material. And when the basis on to which the vocalist is grafted is shakily average anyway - as it is here - the effect is pretty poor. Thankfully it is not on every track, but still, the half way house may work for some, but in this case it is not somewhere I want to stay.
When the track started, I was feeling more positive about Bomb in a Trumpet Factory but the incessant nature of it ground me down and left me not keen. When a similarly over-strong and repetitive rhythm is also used as the backbone of the following track it pretty much rules that out too, even before the vocal starts - a song, truly - but well... there is a Latin theme here, and in that case I could be listening to something with more charm like Buena Vista Social Club. This is not that. The melodies are there but they are wholly suborned to a percussion that by now feels like it is trying to bore into my brain with a jackhammer; I do not appreciate that. Generally there is nothing to complain about with Latin rhythms and tunes - they are almost by definition unobjectionable - but somehow Quantic manage to make it so through the imbalance of the various component parts.
I do feel that the tunes here have more distinct character - both as a theme to the album and differences between the tracks - than those on The 5th Exotic, so that I guess is a mark in its favour. However thus far they have all had the exact same problem with the percussion being too loud relative to the rest of the music. Were the tracks rebalanced I could imagine myself keeping a couple of them, but as presented on this disc there is no interest in that at all. Sabor is the first track where the balance is even vaguely OK to my ear, but it is also 7 minutes long and far too repetitive for a large chunk of that time. The final two numbers (another rap-over-Latin and a rambling mishmash of dull electronica) do absolutely nothing to sway my mind, so the entirety of this disc is for the chop. Whilst I am at it I shall go back and do the same to the majority of the other album to put the lingering injustices to other cut records to bed.
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