various productions album

M

mms

sometimes
its quietly sneaked out into the stores.. so who's heard it.
i think this is gonna be a very 'marmite' record.. for example i like what they do alot but im very dissapointed.
anyone else?
 
Woebot

Woebot

Well-known member
i have it. yes small doses. the quirkier stuff seems to have melted away and you're left with a dubstep-chanson thingy. this morning i thought "the police-meets-future sound of london"

the 2 ltd edition dubplates they put out (instrumentals) were *very* weak.

(sighs)
 
M

mms

sometimes
yep problem is they use the same key and production tropes over and over again - similar sounding effects, one which is just using that one note to next minor note chugging thing that massive attack got down so well on 'Angel' etc and it begins to drain after a couple of listens - hater is on there, that's the standout but that would always be the case, nothing matched it on the album. It doesn't flow well either, but someone had to do it and that's good.
 
S

simon silverdollar

Guest
i like it, but was thrown by my girlfriend remarking that it sounds like a 2006 version of portishead...very true, i think.
 
N

Ned

Ruby Tuesday
simon silverdollar said:
i like it, but was thrown by my girlfriend remarking that it sounds like a 2006 version of portishead...very true, i think.
Click to expand...

Nothing wrong with that IMO.
 
G

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Going by the singles (I'm unsure as to the quality of this album and therefore have held off immediate purchasing...) the problem is there's absolutely no depth, and yet what surfaces there are remain far from entrancing in and of themselves... the folk things sound too new-agey, lacking in that special spectralness or real delicacy of a Vashti Bunyan vocal, say (and the chordings backing them are pretty duff). The dubstep stuff is nicely produced (perhaps too nicely produced- no edge to any of it) and the vocals are lyrically and tonally un-interesting, they sound phoned in.... so its more that it doesn't sound enough like a 2006 Portishead! There's no real sense of emotional involvement or drama (as there was with Beth Gibbons), and the backings just kind of sit there, never reaching a hard hitting sonic climax... oh well...
 
Grievous Angel

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
gek-opel said:
so its more that it doesn't sound enough like a 2006 Portishead!
Click to expand...
Word. Dubstep should have an ambition of reaching that level of emotional intensity - the bass communicates quite a lot but we need more vocal tunes.
 
N

Ned

Ruby Tuesday
Just think though, if this had just come out without all the hype - putting conventional dubstep, vocal dubstep, and mandolin folk on the same album is a pretty amazing thing to do at a time when the dubstep mainstream resolutely refuses to cross over to other genres.
 
G

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Ok- its great on paper. But I can't listen to paper! Secondly its not really that brave cos Various Prod aren't actually a part of the dubstep scene proper are they? They seem more like outsiders with their own take on it (not a bad thing at all in and of itself...) If say Skream put out an album with these characteristics, well, that would be pretty surprising...
 
S

simon silverdollar

Guest
i guess what i mean by 'a 2006 version of portsihead' is that from the two various production 7"s i'd heard prior to the album, i got the impression that they released a bewildering array of different styles, a real magpie sensibility, but on the album the basic blueprint of the sound becomes clear- contemporary head-nodding urban music mixed with pretty, heady female vocals taking their cues from old blues and folk: much like portishead. i like it but i reckon i'd have to be more into skunk than i am to really appreciate it!
 
B

boomnoise

♫
i kind of like it but i'm pretty sure it won't stand up to repeated listens. i get the massive attack thing, also portishead; perhaps lamb also.

all the tracks remind me of something from nine inch nails (soho) to the beatles (lost - it's eleanor rigby - come on!) and it's all no familiar. hater, for me, set the standard and the album tracks here just let me down a bit.

i've never felt comfortable mentioning VP in the same sentence as dubstep and the album does nothing for me to make me feel more at ease with that.
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
I like the beginning of the Boomkat spiel - "if, like us, your bullshit thermometer blows a gasket every time you read some hyperbolic froth proclaiming a new band will change your life and reinstate a flagging faith in music..."

Erm, pot, kettle...
 
S

staypuft

bwah bwah
making them almost impossible to track down just by alias alone.. the name of the album is "The World Is Gone".
standalone I reckon the album has its weaknesses. good dancefloor material tho.. considering their capacity I wonder if that was their aim?
 
U

UFO over easy

online mahjong
simon silverdollar said:
i guess what i mean by 'a 2006 version of portsihead' is that from the two various production 7"s i'd heard prior to the album, i got the impression that they released a bewildering array of different styles, a real magpie sensibility, but on the album the basic blueprint of the sound becomes clear
Click to expand...

That's exactly why the album is so disappointing, and so much less interesting than the singles, I reckon.
 
U

U-Basstard

tragic mix
try checking them in a live context, we had them play for us earlier this year and they did an awesome set, 1 man on dex and t'other on laptop, moving back and forth between big dubstep/grime trax off the dex and their own productions tweaked on the laptop, worked really well and got the crowd hyped, honestly one of the best/most memorable live/dj sets i've seen in the last few years. plus the fact that their tunes are maybe 'too clean' works very well on a big system, they sounded better than anyone else in my room that night.
 
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