Do you ever hear the first 3 minutes of a CD and get really excited. For about 200 seconds, you’re captivated, this is the best things you’ve ever heard, buy a gig ticket, get a T-shirt, join the fan club and get a tattoo. But wait, thinking about it this is a bit rubbish. The seconds tick by – what was I thinking? This isn’t good, this is boring, this is all the same. Allow me to introduce Various, and their album ‘The World is Gone’. The first thing to note about this duo (Adam and Ian) is that they have chosen the most confusing name going (it took this reviewer a while to realise that there was just one band called Various, rather than various artists).
Once you get over that, album opener ‘Thuunk’ will penetrate you like an electro-pop-dance iron rod of excitement – it’s edgy, jerky and animated, with high end twiddling and spoken word vocals. Think early days of Faithless hanging out down a back alley. Cue premature adulation (I said adulation). Track 2 ‘Circle of Sorrow’ conversely, is more like Faithless circa Dido era, with monotonous, flat sounding vocals and a repetitive guitar loop that could verge of the beautiful if it wasn’t so over-used!! Talk about killing the mood! The same is true when it comes to ‘Deadman’, and the life sapping album closer ‘Fly’, which sounds very much like something Enya would’ve put her name to. Just a little bit dull.
But this banality is softened by an admirable attempt to recreate the grimey sublow sound of 5 years ago, championed by Wiley and the likes, before the grime scene went all a bit ‘Shake a leg’. Using noises that sound like they’ve been dragged straight from a commodore computer game, the beat that adorns tracks such as ‘Hater’ are off-beat, subtle, and sparse, but at the same time fully potent and effective. Without the vocals this, as well as other edgy beat-fests, ‘Sir’ and ‘Today’ may not find themselves out of place in many a dodgy rave. Good in places, but all in all, is in severe danger of getting little bit samey after the first 5 tracks.
Rating: 2.5/5
Release Date: 17th July 2006
Label: XL recordings
Info: http://www.xlrecordings.com
