Review Summary: Dubbed out super-group create a delicate, beautiful piece of work. Hidden under a whole lot of fuzz.
“I” is not the pronoun to use when you’re trying to be the most objective as possible. One (me) would suppose, that if you’re writing a quote-un-quote “music review,” it is a word you should turn coat run from most frequently, but, well, *** it.
Waiting For You is one of the hardest album
I’ve ever had to try and sum up into a collection of words and sentences, but if only for the fact that
I think it is such an intricate, rewarding piece of music. One that if you’re even a passing fan of dub-step, trip-hop, or avante-pop
I would implore you not to overlook it.
King Midas Sound, or for us layman, Kevin Martin (aka The Bug), poet/singer Roger Robinson and Japanese pop star Hitomi; with their debut, are a vibrant mix of deep bass, glitchy tweaks, woozy synths, trip-hop ideals and foreboding themes. Buried under an ethereal haze
Waiting For You is a dystopian nightmare wrapped up in down comforters. Martin’s deep and lush beats are the perfect vehicle for the falsetto whispers of Robinson (ala a cleaner Burial) and Hitomi’s coos, providing girth to the wasted future, loss of love and overbearing fear painted in the lyrics. Though, much like classic dub and reggae there’s joy and redemption found in the poignancy, each song possessing a sense of hope despite itself. But one of the finest aspect of the album is it’s sense of menace, akin to
Mezzanine more than
London Zoo,
Waiting For You starts off with a bang and demands your attentive observation for the rest of the run-time. Buried beneath the wash are numerous treasures: introspective prose, layers and layers of evil beats, the short of it, the album gets better with the more investment you put into it. The sections of meandering fuzz and boring flow are few and far between, and worth the trip to the sections of genius. Genius may be a bit too much hyperbole, but the kick this group finds is a fine niche. Their knack for supplying banging reverb drenched beats is impeccable, and each song is sopping with hooks, but you’ve just got to find them sometimes.
It’s a weird space they occupy, a meshing of trip-hop and dub-step, to put it as base as possible. Really they incorporate classic reggae, R&B, hip-hop, dream-pop along with it, making
Waiting For You a particularly exhilarating experience from beginning to end. But one that can be strangely difficult to find, especially when it’s hidden beneath so much mess. After a few spins though, Robinson’s and Hitomi’s verses melt into the fuzz, the bass rattles walls, and all the hyper flourishes of horns, toms and synths hit just the right note. The album itself plays almost like a merging between Burials recent
Untrue and the aforementioned
Mezzanine, providing the replay and the pop sentimentality -- five miles below sea-level. It’s worth it, most definitely, but sometimes it’s just takes a while to swim.
