In which Hooverphonic peel back the curtain on our trip-hop biases…
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[4.57]
Alfred Soto: Hooverphonic! Where’ve you been, crew? The strings and French bits and amiable anomie give it a Black Box Recorder ambience (does anyone care about Black Box Recorder?)
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: The trip-hop revival no one wants to acknowledge delivereth once more! Too bad the parts of this that sound like “Eden” by Brigitte are exponentially better than the parts of this that just sound like disco-funk.
[6]
John Seroff: Who knew there was room in my heart for a languid, spacier, bass-ier, Belgian trip-hop take on “Hit the Road, Jack”?
[7]
Micha Cavaseno: Please leave fake-funky trip-hop back in the last decade along with the word “electronica,” would you kindly? I still struggle with the fact that there was a world where Air was successful and that people really genuinely liked those Kosheen albums.
[2]
Thomas Inskeep: This doesn’t know if it wants to be acid jazz, trip-hop, or R&B and fails at all of it.
[2]
Brad Shoup: I could do without 95% of the Venga-boums; they take away from Emilie Satt and the funky-house rhythm section. Overall, they’ve made a great atmosphere: it’s danceable but also clandestine.
[6]
Iain Mew: More to come on teasing via uncompleted lines this time next week, but the awkward mood-interruption in place of the obvious “come” at the end of “I’m under his thumb and he’s making me…” marks the point where the overly stagy interplay between the two singers falls apart completely. A shame, because the bass and strings make for much better partners.
[4]