The modern world really is amazing sometimes! Technological advances that have been made in recent years would have been thought of as impossible a few decades ago, but here we are, in the digital age. The technology that is available now is so advanced and widely used that it has helped Justin Lockey, of yourcodenameis:milo fame, and Aid Burrows, of err… British Expeditionary Force fame, create a whole album without ever meeting in real life. This has all been made possible by the two discussing their project over the telephone, and sending each other different parts for it online. That fact alone is truly remarkable. It’s just a shame that the music itself isn’t as interesting as the story behind its conception.
Considering the way in which the album was written, it is pretty much a given that ‘Chapter One…’ uses a lot of electronica. However, it is more than just a plain electronica album. It creates, well attempts to create, heavenly soundscapes, not unlike a band such as Iceland’s Sigur Ros. On paper this sounds like a winning mixture, surely – post-rock meets electronica, right? In reality it doesn’t work so well. There are instances where it does work, for example the title track ‘A Long Way From Home’. The track makes great use of a drum machine, and a cold-sounding piano part accompanying Burrows’ breathy vocals. It is relaxing, dream-like even, and unlike most of the songs here is actually structured well. Structure is a major problem throughout the album as many of the songs don’t appear to go anywhere and are far too repetitive despite their short lengths. In fact, the length of the title track is one of the reasons why it works so well. It has time to go somewhere (six-and-a-half minutes) while many of the tracks on the album simply don’t.
The album gets off to an inauspicious start with ‘Back Of The Hand’. Actual music (excluding vocals) is minimal and dare I say it – boring. Background music in the track is made up twinkling electronic noises with some building fuzzy sounds, but that is part of the problem – it just doesn’t build to anything. The track is over before you know it, and to be honest never really sounded like anything special was going to happen. Similarly short songs such as ‘Throwing Little Stones’ and ‘The Engine’ suffer the same fate as the album opener. All three are around the three-minute mark, but considering the tiny number of motifs expressed in each track they appear to be even shorter. ‘Throwing Little Stones’ is much like ‘Back Of The Hand’ with it’s soft ‘twinkling’ piano playing, while ‘The Engine’ sounds a bit rougher, a bit more industrial – though still a million miles away from a band like Ministry. Also, it is worth mentioning that by this point in the album the vocals have been well established as something that is just plain irritating. Burrows’ vocals sound like an Englishman imitating a Scandinavian while high, and while this may be fairly relaxing, it is still very annoying.
When Lockey and Burrows were discussing their latest project online or on the telephone they must have been pretty happy with their idea of electronic-post-rock and really it isn’t hard to see why. It should work, and in all honesty, the idea itself does work. This is evident because of good songs such as ‘A Long Way From Home’ and ‘Lashing Out’; but overall, on this album the execution of such a conception isn’t great by any means. This is mainly down to the songs not being nearly long enough, poor structuring and a lack of ideas being used. ‘Chapter Two…’ is scheduled for a 2008 release, and hopefully by now they will have got their act together and fixed what is wrong with ‘Chapter One…’ – which is rather a lot. However, despite all its shortcomings the album is still relaxing the whole way through and this of course is at least one positive to be taken from the album. Overall, the album itself was a good concept, but musically, it suffered from a lack of ideas and for the most part is a disinteresting listen. The album would have probably served better as a prologue than the first chapter proper; although, only time will tell what is next in the story of the British Expeditionary Force.
