 |
| Track list: 1. Overture 2. Spoken 3. Flight 4. Vorka 5. Hushed 6. Reminder 7. Seven Hunters 8. Fourth Wall 9. Disquiet 10. Vainamoinen Running time: 60 minutes Released: 2012 |
I am pretty sure that I saw these guys live at The Big Tent festival one year - three or four ago now, I think - and was struck by how not only had they ripped off the style of The Cinematic Orchestra, but they had copied them in nomenclature too! I jest, but pointedly so: there are some pretty significant similarities there, though my ear (or my experience of them both) tells me the Cinematics are simply a cut above.
Truth be told, I am not quite sure how and why I ended up acquiring this album, because I was not particularly impressed by that live showing. Acquire it I did, though, so now I will listen to it and try not to prejudge based on a fading memory.
We open with a track that is recorded so low I need to up my volume to really pick anything out. A fairly fast number, Overture has a strange feel to it: busy, but empty. Either that, or I am prejudicing myself based on a BBC Music review I read last night. It is possible that I have formed a similar opinion to that reviewer purely naturally, but the seed of the idea was undoubtedly in my head before I began, so I cannot claim clear originality of thought. The track itself is so-so. Lots of drums, a melody, but not much else in the mix. Its alright, I suppose, but was a little too soulless for me. The next track opens more promisingly - trumpets providing lonely calls over the percussion (I want to say programming but...). There is not that much heft to it though, and the intermediate line - a strumming guitar note? - leaves much to be desired. Overall this is flashing me back to Quantic and The 5th Exotic again. Inoffensive Downbeat Shuffle; desirable enough structure, but not enough to go with it.
This is a 10 track album that lasts an hour, and it achieves that length through most tracks going on a bit. There are a couple of noticeably longer tunes, and 2 that are "radio friendly" length but most are in the 5-6 minute range. Why do I mention this? Well, because already it feels like it is dragging a bit and I am only half way through track 3. This does feel like there is a bit more going on though. In a funny kind of way the sounds conjure images akin to that on the cover of the album - of activity amongst flocks of birds. Given this track is called Flight that is almost certainly deliberate, so despite the fact the piece is wearing on me I have to applaud Hidden Orchestra for that, at least. At this point I am fairly certain that the underwhelming live performance has indeed instilled a bias in me; I am predisposed not to like this much and that is becoming self-fulfilling prophecy. Were I reviewing I would take a break here, clear my head and come back to finish up at a later date, with more energy, in a different mood etc. However I am not, and therefore I plough on into Vorka which loses the sense of imagery that Flight had. It also suffers from lacking any real tune. There are fragments of melody here and there but they are too disparate and too subservient to the looping percussion to offer any real interest. One of the higher parts is a "wailing" sound, too, which is never good.
I am not even half way through yet, trackwise; it will have been a long hour. Hushed is more melodic again, though so it is at least respite from the slaving of tune to the needs of rhythm. This time the beats are still a little too prominent in places but the balance is far better overall, and there is more coherence to the themes played out over the loops. It is a pleasant - that word again - piece, but there is little compelling about it. Reminder starts with a pretty naff little looped piano riff, adds a pretty naff drum riff, then adds lukewarm water and serves... cold. Ugh. I cannot tell what the group were aiming for with this one, but it really falls into "generic movie tension" music trap. Slightly high strung, cheesy "break it up" brass and bass drum rumbles. The problem is that it just does not have the edge to it to really carry it off, and the constant trilling of one of the quieter parts is actively harmful to that. The piece just fails... fails to excite, fails to unnerve, fails to innervate, enervate, innovate or to project a strong sense of, well, anything. I do not want to be too scathing, it is perfectly listenable, in that way that the shuffle normally is; it is just uninspired.
Seven Hunters is the long "epic" on the disc - almost 10 minutes. It opens brightly enough, with a little more top end and a real contribution from the "orchestra", but it seems to lose direction after 2 minutes or so and become a soupy mess of different parts overlapping and interfering with each other rather than combining to tell a consistent story. I have hope when the cacophony dies down. Stripped back to basics, the tune can build again... back comes the early refrain (a loop I rather like, shockingly!) and layers are added to it. This is better. Again the title seems to fit the piece well: the tangle of sounds at its messiest fits quite nicely with the image of a hunter stirring up his prey then feeding on the confusion his agitation has wrought. The cleaner parts of the track maybe do not back that up so much, but they are not too far away. It is certainly one of the better, more consistent and enjoyable tracks here to date, and as I start to consider which tracks will be kept, this one is up there despite its length.
We are back to bad movie music when it ends though for the first of the two shorter pieces. Fourth Wall does not seem to be about breaking it as much as it is about enforcing it - hammering home the idea of watching some other passive media. There is a little bright spot in the middle of the piece but the general timbre is generic movie tension all over. There - coining a new bumper-sticker tag for LastFM! That was a long 4 minutes. Home stretch now, just 2 tracks and about 10 minutes left.
Disquiet is not disquieting. It is lacking soul though and I find myself very much agreeing with that BBC review I linked earlier in practice as well as from memory. For background music, not paying attention sound, yeah I see a significant appeal here. For attentive listening there is just too much missing - the intangibles that make something engaging rather than bland, likeable rather than unobjectionable. The BBC man reckons it is a sense of narrative development, and certainly that comes with consistency. It is thus of little surprise to me that the most coherent and engaging tracks, for me, were those where the sounds and the titles combined to build pictures, images and themes in my mind. Sure, you could argue that generic movie tension does that too - I invariably picture some black and white 40s or 50s detective movie - but that is almost certainly not what was intended, and that picture is, after all, a mocking one. Overall I give myself a slap on the wrist for an impulsive and against the grain buy, and I quietly trim down to the three tracks that inspired any sense of welcomeness. The hour has passed, and it is time to hide the rest of the orchestra where I cannot find it again.
We open with a track that is recorded so low I need to up my volume to really pick anything out. A fairly fast number, Overture has a strange feel to it: busy, but empty. Either that, or I am prejudicing myself based on a BBC Music review I read last night. It is possible that I have formed a similar opinion to that reviewer purely naturally, but the seed of the idea was undoubtedly in my head before I began, so I cannot claim clear originality of thought. The track itself is so-so. Lots of drums, a melody, but not much else in the mix. Its alright, I suppose, but was a little too soulless for me. The next track opens more promisingly - trumpets providing lonely calls over the percussion (I want to say programming but...). There is not that much heft to it though, and the intermediate line - a strumming guitar note? - leaves much to be desired. Overall this is flashing me back to Quantic and The 5th Exotic again. Inoffensive Downbeat Shuffle; desirable enough structure, but not enough to go with it.
This is a 10 track album that lasts an hour, and it achieves that length through most tracks going on a bit. There are a couple of noticeably longer tunes, and 2 that are "radio friendly" length but most are in the 5-6 minute range. Why do I mention this? Well, because already it feels like it is dragging a bit and I am only half way through track 3. This does feel like there is a bit more going on though. In a funny kind of way the sounds conjure images akin to that on the cover of the album - of activity amongst flocks of birds. Given this track is called Flight that is almost certainly deliberate, so despite the fact the piece is wearing on me I have to applaud Hidden Orchestra for that, at least. At this point I am fairly certain that the underwhelming live performance has indeed instilled a bias in me; I am predisposed not to like this much and that is becoming self-fulfilling prophecy. Were I reviewing I would take a break here, clear my head and come back to finish up at a later date, with more energy, in a different mood etc. However I am not, and therefore I plough on into Vorka which loses the sense of imagery that Flight had. It also suffers from lacking any real tune. There are fragments of melody here and there but they are too disparate and too subservient to the looping percussion to offer any real interest. One of the higher parts is a "wailing" sound, too, which is never good.
I am not even half way through yet, trackwise; it will have been a long hour. Hushed is more melodic again, though so it is at least respite from the slaving of tune to the needs of rhythm. This time the beats are still a little too prominent in places but the balance is far better overall, and there is more coherence to the themes played out over the loops. It is a pleasant - that word again - piece, but there is little compelling about it. Reminder starts with a pretty naff little looped piano riff, adds a pretty naff drum riff, then adds lukewarm water and serves... cold. Ugh. I cannot tell what the group were aiming for with this one, but it really falls into "generic movie tension" music trap. Slightly high strung, cheesy "break it up" brass and bass drum rumbles. The problem is that it just does not have the edge to it to really carry it off, and the constant trilling of one of the quieter parts is actively harmful to that. The piece just fails... fails to excite, fails to unnerve, fails to innervate, enervate, innovate or to project a strong sense of, well, anything. I do not want to be too scathing, it is perfectly listenable, in that way that the shuffle normally is; it is just uninspired.
Seven Hunters is the long "epic" on the disc - almost 10 minutes. It opens brightly enough, with a little more top end and a real contribution from the "orchestra", but it seems to lose direction after 2 minutes or so and become a soupy mess of different parts overlapping and interfering with each other rather than combining to tell a consistent story. I have hope when the cacophony dies down. Stripped back to basics, the tune can build again... back comes the early refrain (a loop I rather like, shockingly!) and layers are added to it. This is better. Again the title seems to fit the piece well: the tangle of sounds at its messiest fits quite nicely with the image of a hunter stirring up his prey then feeding on the confusion his agitation has wrought. The cleaner parts of the track maybe do not back that up so much, but they are not too far away. It is certainly one of the better, more consistent and enjoyable tracks here to date, and as I start to consider which tracks will be kept, this one is up there despite its length.
We are back to bad movie music when it ends though for the first of the two shorter pieces. Fourth Wall does not seem to be about breaking it as much as it is about enforcing it - hammering home the idea of watching some other passive media. There is a little bright spot in the middle of the piece but the general timbre is generic movie tension all over. There - coining a new bumper-sticker tag for LastFM! That was a long 4 minutes. Home stretch now, just 2 tracks and about 10 minutes left.
Disquiet is not disquieting. It is lacking soul though and I find myself very much agreeing with that BBC review I linked earlier in practice as well as from memory. For background music, not paying attention sound, yeah I see a significant appeal here. For attentive listening there is just too much missing - the intangibles that make something engaging rather than bland, likeable rather than unobjectionable. The BBC man reckons it is a sense of narrative development, and certainly that comes with consistency. It is thus of little surprise to me that the most coherent and engaging tracks, for me, were those where the sounds and the titles combined to build pictures, images and themes in my mind. Sure, you could argue that generic movie tension does that too - I invariably picture some black and white 40s or 50s detective movie - but that is almost certainly not what was intended, and that picture is, after all, a mocking one. Overall I give myself a slap on the wrist for an impulsive and against the grain buy, and I quietly trim down to the three tracks that inspired any sense of welcomeness. The hour has passed, and it is time to hide the rest of the orchestra where I cannot find it again.
No comments:
Post a Comment