Wednesday, June 3, 2015

ooh gosh (Future Pale)



An odd way to treat the "Think" break and all that pirate patter - "oh my gosh', "hold it down", "easy easy" "yes UK massive” -   take what should be uproarious and make it droopy and enervated..... 

Not completely de-vibed but definitely depleted and discombobulated 



update: it's growing on me, but the end bit... the end bit is just "Belfast" by Orbital, isn't it?


Mark Richardson has a good riff on Jamie xx's album at Pitchfork:

"The sampler is a memory machine. This is true in both the literal sense—memory is one of the device’s key specs, measuring how much sonic information it can hold in its "mind" at once—but also as a metaphor. When you capture and play back a sound, transposing it to a new context, you are "playing" the memories that have attached themselves to the original piece of music as much as you are playing a particular piece of sound. The producer Jamie Smith, better known to the world as Jamie xx, is a sampling artist and a memory artist. He does things with the music he's absorbed and with the associations that are embedded within it. So when we listen to his music, we aren’t just listening to music played by people in a room. We’re listening to his listening and hearing his hearing; he senses memories in certain sounds—some of which he was there to experience the first time, some of which have been handed down to him—and transforms them into something new and personal."

I suppose this is very Burial -  hauntology meets hardcore-continuum / memoradelic dance - although without the nostalgic anguish...  the yearning futile grasp for lost time that infuses those first two Burial albums

(Always thought the xx = Young Marble Giants divided by Burial )  

Then again, with all musicians (of the record collection rock era) you could say we are listening to their listening, whether they use a sampler or not.... they are all playing with memories, some their own (primary and formative encounters with music) and some vicarious and second hand


Bits I've heard of In Colour on Spotify so far sound like blubstep without the tears... that warm, wet sound-palette... bright, clinical sense of space


update #2: crikey, Boomkat bashes an album!

'In Colour' posits Jamie as the pre-eminent posh soul boy, lifting and massaging inspiration from the rich heritage of late '80s + early '90s London dance culture and channelling it into a pop-ready format palatable to Radio 1 daytime tastes and festival soundtracks. The putative "soul" of rare groove, boogie, hardcore and early jungle is sucked out and spliced with vocals in feathered arrangements ripened up for students and yummy mummys alike - all under one roof. From the deflated hardcore of 'Gosh' to the trudging 'Girl', it's as seductive as a Waitrose fridge on a warm day, infused with exotic tropical reference points in the steel drums of 'Obvs', mixing the suburban Breaks of latter-day Chicane and Marine Parade with woolly chords right out of a Lamb classic in 'Hold Tight', or nodding to seminal Joss Stone in 'Loud Places'. Oh, it's going to be a great summer, we can just feel it.


"Deflated" was actually my first word-choice for "Gosh"'s use of "Think" /pirate MC patter , but then I went with "droopy"!


Funny to see the ILM-ers laying into it.... 



2 and half stars from Andrew Ryce at Resident Advisor... 



"Judging from "Gosh" and "Hold Tight" (both loaded with clichéd MC chatter), you'd think hardcore and jungle never had any grit, soul or edge. Smith assembles his tracks like he's using a checklist, putting familiar elements together without seeming to understand what makes them work. His rave tributes are the equivalent of a Hallmark greeting card blaring out tinny versions of classic rock songs,"


It's this season's Future Brown perhaps - a glossy antiseptic mausoleum where street sounds go to be embalmed 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

besides the young thug/popcaan track, i've really not felt any of the singles. not sure what the press sees in this guy (including the xx).

Tim 'Space Debris' said...

On the money with The Young Marble Giants comparison. I just had them pegged as a tribute band to those Welsh post-punk legends.