I have a tough time critiquing a full album when there are multiple vocalits. Each vocalist can bring to the table a new vibe, a new technique or a new feel to the album. One good example is Nouvelle Vague, the bosa nova style French female vocalist group that revamps songs by such bands as Sex Pistols, Depeche Mode and Joy Division.

What helps “Deep” hold up as a complete album is the production and mixing of the two members of Ror-Shak, Stakka and DJ DB. Both are very well known in the Drum & Bass world. DJ DB was one of the first supporters of D&B in America and Stakka is a principal in the label that brought Fujiya & Miyagi to our shores. Given their backgrounds, they’re able to successfully meld their beats together and sampled vamps. There is a dark and mysterious element to this album, hence the title. Helping to enhance this feel is the albums guest vocalists – Julee Cruise, Lisa Shaw, Wendy Starland and Chantel Claret from Morningwood. Besides Chantel, you’ve most likely heard these vocalists at some night club as you danced the night away (if clubbing is your thing).

It’s also easy to hear the Zero 7 influence, as both artists site them as inspiration for the album. An interesting point to their story is that they actually started out by producing a dancefloor tune that took hold of many clubs and became a sought after track. After their initial success they agreed to collaborate on a full album but it was during the making of the album that they began moving away from pure dancefloor D&B to more mellow and easier listening grooves.

The two stand out tracks for me are “A Forest” and “Heist”. “A Forest” features Chantel Claret from Morningwood. It starts off sounding a bit like a Depeche Mode song. The same high treble guitar sound with a bunch of reverb. Then Stakka turns the beat up and Chantel’s voice comes soaring in. “Heist”, on the other hand, doesn’t involve any vocals. It’s a real dark moment in the album and we find it towards the end of the album. Some of the beats sampled remind me of the recent masterpiece by Knife. There are also moments during the song that I’m reminded of the movie Labryinth – the part when the young female is in distress, running for her life from Bowie only to find that she has no choice but to face her fear of the labryinth.

It’s nothing mind blowing but I don’t think that’s what these two were going after. I think they were looking to make a record that you could pop on during any number of occasions. Some tracks you could easily see a hundred kids blaring at 3 am waving their glowsticks in the air going nuts while other tracks you can easily see yourself cruising in the car on a nice Sunday afternoon. It allows your mind to drift and for a moment or two to think deep thoughts. Nothing to unfamalier for this philosopher major.

If you’re a fan of Portishead, trip-hop, drum & bass, electronic lounge or just a curious music lover, I would recommend giving this one a shot.

Links of Interest:

www.myspace.com/r0rshak

Stream Full Album

Purchase “Deep”

MP3 – “A Forest”

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Links of Interest:

http://www.myspace.com/contriva

MorrMusic.com

Purchase “Separate Chambers” : Amazon

I love family reunions. Not just because I get to see how interesting and unique each member of my family can be, but also to share common interests. Two particular cousins (husband and wife) share similar taste in music as I and after the last reunion we began introducing each other to new music. They mostly introduced me to the electronic world, a world I’ve been exploring for the past couple years. In return, I provided mostly obscure, or as obscure as I can get, indie bands. The range of indie is quite sparse from your psychedelic chilled out blues of Brightblack Morning Light to one of my favorite electronic groups from the UK, Hot Chip. The amount of music received at one time was a good amount. I uploaded the albums all at once. If you’re an owner of an iPod, and you most likely are if you’re reading this blog, you’ll understand this next phenomenon. I just discovered one of the bands. Why is this strange? I uploaded the music about 5 months ago.

With the pod, I have a tendency to look over bands that I may not know or I heard briefly and was in a funky mood and therefore never returned. I’m using shuffle more and more and it’s because of the shuffle that I found my new go to band – Contriva.

Contriva is from Berlin, Germany. They consist of four band members (guitar, bass guitar, keys and drums). They all met each other in 1997 as schoolmates and have been making music together off and on since. They’ve had their side projects, one member plays with a favorite Berlin based group of mine, The Notwist. And it’s been some time since they’ve put out an album together, roughly three years. They’ve pumped out some EP’s and a couple LP’s – “Tell Me When” in 2000 and “If You Had Stayed” in 2003. Monika Records put out those two. They even started their own vinyl label called Lok Musik. Lok stands for locomotion, which takes us in to their latest release and their sound – many describe it as traveling music.

Their latest album, “Separate Chambers”, was released on Morr Music in November 2006. They’ve developed their sound mainly around the instruments. Vocals don’t really enter in to the equation, except for on a few occasions. Their goal is to develop instrumental pop music that doesn’t rely on the vocals to carry the song. It’s an interesting approach and one that has been adopted more and more by artists. My music catalogue and memory only goes so far but the first thing that jumps out at me right away is to compare their philosophy with Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear. Noah developed his latest masterpiece over a two year period and while there are a significant amount of vocals in the tracks, they are used more for their instrumental value versus their lyrical value. In many cases you can barely hear what he’s saying. And there are loads of pop themes in Person Pitch.

“Separate Chambers” starts us off with a quintessential traveling song. It might as well be called The Traveler but it’s actually called “Good To Know”. A slow grooving beat and a repetitive bass line sets the mood while a distorted twangy guitar takes us on a wild journey through the back roads. Great way to ease us in to the album. There are two songs that jump out at me. One just happens to have vocals.

“Before” is a bit of a break from the first few tracks. It’s basically a straight up pop tune. Something we could easily hear on our local radio stations. It’s really a beautiful song. And the female vocals on this track help take it to that radio friendly level.

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“Centipede” is the track, in my opinion, that encompasses Contriva’s sound. The slow guitar riff and eerie sound effects in the back create tension at first. Then it’s all released as the drum beat settles in and the grand piano enters. After a few more bars of the beginning theme, the song changes key for a second and then back to the original theme. It repeats this flow for a little under a minute then it collapes down to just the acoustic guitar again and eerie background noises and then we climb back up. It’s quite a simple formula – instrumental pop music.

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If you’re looking for that perfect Spring / early Summer album, where you can go out on your porch after a hard days work, crack a beer and just relax, you need to look no further.