Author: Matt Oliver

Album Review: The Egg / ‘Something To Do’ (Squarepeg)

Matt Oliver 1 Comment

★★★☆☆

Best known for the David Guetta mash-up “Love Don’t Let Me Go,” The Egg crack a classic case of finding a groove and getting comfortable with it, to the point of leaving it with a butt imprint. The indie-for-the-dance-set and vice versa gets its cheeks warm after a particularly exciting start as well; after the inviting electro-house/pop “Catch” and “A Bit” being dominated by everyman surrealism, they then come to rest on a hyper-polished punk-funk sound interlinked to resonant relaxation and retro posturing big enough to fire up festivals at will by coasting into a surge.

“In Your Pocket” induces a big chill on its way to a bracing flowering up of Brit-pop, that goes on to hug the title track and “Over There”, whose vocal gets baggier and baggier where the dance-rock goes backwards in time (maybe a reflection of The Egg’s large gaps between LPs in the past). “Stars” threatens to take a Muse-style space-rock jangle, and “Keep It Simple Stupid” gets the album back on a less dreamy, more alert footing. All are variations on paper, but are inextricably linked back to the same, one-paced widescreen nucleus; and on an album ten tracks long, that doesn’t represent good value, instead denoting one good idea The Egg try to stretch for all its worth.
File under: Digitalism, The Presets, Dirty Vegas

Album Review: The Advent / ‘Sonic Intervention’ (H-Productions)

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★★★★☆

Is seven years too long a gap between albums, regardless of an intervening workload? With a starry history dating back to the ’90s you’re expecting that with The Advent’s now solo pilot Cisco Ferreira, experience will count for everything, but the album format can be a disrespecting saboteur. Introduced by the stinging if rather aimless 8-bit electro passage “Present Voyage” that doesn’t really make sense until it finds an opposing bookend in “Electric Pandemic”, you’re none the wiser as to whether Ferreira’s playing catch up. (Intentionally sounding ancient isn’t big news nowadays.)

Sonic Intervention is mapped out where The Advent hops off his rocket, fights fierily at ground level, then remounts his vessel. The crux of the record is techno thundering along, and wringing jugulars like they’re dishcloths. “Gamora” is murky, wading before it starts grooving to a click-clack of pistons and pulleys, and Ferreira soon gets nose to grindstone to knock out bolshie battlers “Arrival” and the grimly good “Body Count,” grinding away as pulses race as quickly as knots in stomachs are tied until they’re looking to make a herniated exit, with only “Disco Diva” dragging itself from the depths with funky loop action. That electro foreword and finale are still questionable; the meat in the sandwich is the work of a master chef.
File under: Mr G, Cari Lekebusch, Rogue Modelz

Album Review: Art Bleek / ‘The Time’ (Eevonext)

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★★★☆☆

Once upon a time Arthur Pochon was a man for jazzy broken beat, boho hip-hop and lounging that wasn’t too cool for the dance floor but definitely knew that slumming it sophisticatedly was his meat and drink. Fast forward six years from Between Yesterday & Tomorrow and Bleek is now a deep house cadet making informally logical progression. The trouble brewing underneath “Chora,” a sub-tribal diversion sizing up arenas, and the electro-influenced “Kafeneion,” are precursors to Bleek’s smooth, technically faultless navigations. The bass-driven “Backwash” and comforting “Super Blue,” which in particular has more potential opportunities than most, travel through colour cycles, and Bleek has the measure of most styles, inserting a nagging drone into “Feel Me”, and making marginal adjustments to stay as steady as you may remember him from his past appreciation of hammocks and easy loungers – you can feel “Sheer Addiction” patting the couch.

It’s a struggle to comment on anything unique about the album’s personality; however, if you can be critical about being too precise, then so be it. The methodically neat veneer is him flicking the first domino and watching the rest fall in sequence. For a deep house set it does have hold a certain twinkle and doesn’t keep burrowing downwards until it turns ears off, but it can’t help but fall into the category of not being at all bad, but where being average won’t do.
File under: Zoowax, Norken & Deer, Claro Intelecto

Album Review: Ralf GUM / ‘Never Leaves You’ (GOGO Music)

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★★★☆☆

They should use Ralf GUM as a spokesman for positive thinking, taking the place of Bobby McFerrin for a new “Don’t Worry Be Happy” campaign. The German replays his house paradise of Uniting Music with effortless elegance. If you like your house a little more ‘uptight,’ GUM will seem like the anti-DJ. If you want class and respecting of values that reaffirm faith, GUM is king of a castle he’s built with his own bejewelled bucket and spade, glossing everything from pianos to percussion to bass to brass to vocals with sunny grace and Latin schmoozing.

Put Never Leaves You in a scrum of soulful funky house and it’ll struggle to break from the pack. It only knows one direction, just keeping its head above the watery in places (“Burning Star”), regardless of the calibre of assisting vocalists Robert Owens, Soul II Soul’s Caron Wheeler (on the marginally more uppity “So Good”) and Kenny Bobien. Know the man’s standards and what you want on a hot flute-clinking day and you’ll be quickly eyeing your position by the pool, your rump shaking politely amidst respectful flirtations (Jaidene Veda’s “Do It For Love” is all about private hideaways and Mediterranean luxury). You can absolve GUM from clichés when his sonic sunscreen begins working into crisping skin, because it’s the easiest of club music to shape your schedule around.
File under: Reel People, Tone Control, Raw Artistic Soul