Hello! I’m back and as promised I have a small mountain of CD’s to get through and to tell you about.
Now, the problem with having so much music lying around is there is a massive temptation to listen to it all at once and I don’t think you can be quite so objective. It’s like heading to a pick ‘n’ mix counter. If your Mum has only given you 20 pence, you’ll choose carefully and savor every single one of your cola bottles and weird egg shaped sweets. But should you be lucky enough to get a quid (that’s a £1 for my foreign friends), then you’re going to go for the works and scoff the lot.
So I’m listening to no more than two at a time to give you, my loyal readers, the best possible review. These are you’re carefully savored sweeties.
They shot to fame with their first album “Melody AM” when T-Mobile used “So Easy” for an advert. That launched them into the mainstream and various other endorsements (they have a track called “Eple” that means “Apple” in Norwegian and Apple Computers licensed this track for the intro music on OSX 10.3) helped to cement that success. I remember getting this album as a present from my little brother and thinking what a gem it was. A very chilled out album and beautifully crafted.
Following that came “The Understanding” and that was followed by “Junior”, the predecessor to this one.
Junior was a lot more electro and up tempo. In my opinion is was a triumph and their best work yet – and when you consider how good they’d been, this takes some doing. So when I heard they had released a follow up album, I just bought it without even considering to listen to any of it first.
That may have been a mistake.
Basically, this is a completely instrumental album, borrowing a couple of rifts, tunes and samples from Junior. It’s like a progressive project – I supposed as much as an evolution, it’s the senior. The thing is though, unless you want to play this in the background of a shop/trendy bar/lift, it’s not got a lot going for it.
To be fair, the first time I listened to it, my first impression was “I’m not feeling the love for this”. I thought this was destined to be my next disposable Frisbee but it is better than that. I do like the dreaminess of it and it’s still skillfully put together. It’s not a terrible mash of experimental noise that only serves the purpose of replacement white noise… but it’s also not really an album. This would have been an awesome bonus CD for Junior. Or perhaps that should have released them together for a complete experience. Maybe, that was the plan but Senior wasn’t ready or maybe the record company got greedy and thought it would stand on it’s own. Whatever the reason, I can’t see this one going down as a classic, and the type of music on here definitely isn’t the sort that you’d find in the top 40.
Perhaps that is the point of it. They are an introverted pair and maybe this is them hiding for a bit. That’s what the album cover looks like.
I can imagine someone like Zane Lowe playing this and calling it a “beautifully mystical work of magic”. And it may be. But trust me, you won’t be leaving this one on repeat.
So buy it if you are a die hard fan, or if you like something nice to fall asleep to – but be warned, you need to fall asleep before the last track which is 12 minutes of the same 5 notes over and over and over again…! If you’re looking for something to sing along to in the car or to tap your feet to at work, this isn’t for you.
It saddens me to say, but just one G for this one. If you want a treat, buy their older stuff.
G
Stay tuned, I will be posting more very soon!