Nice! upbeat and somewhat sad moods mixed up with dance beats and organs. Most likely the best alternative dance album off 2008
Feel The Love
Lights And Music
Unforgettable Season
Hearts On Fire
Strangers In The Wind
Gum Chimes
Will Get Fooled Again
Which Song
Glycaemic Index Blues
The whole album, every one of its songs has nice catchy melodies, and interesting stuff. Perfect production. Superb!
One of the best releases off 2009 without any doubt. It surely is not the first time I agree with the critics.
By the way, the band is not that fine in live. The singer can’t almost get his falsetto as high as in the studio…
Every song. They’re very similar, even sharing Goa-esque scales, but if I’d have to select a few, they’ll be:
Never Ever Land
Spaniard
B.P. Empire
Dancing with Kadafi
Dear diary, this week I enjoyed and listened to: the second album of Orbital.
Wow, I must say Chemical Brothers also had such a week. Most of their sound is very similar to this album’s.
Impressive, enjoyable, well driven and easy listenable.
Today I feel like analyzing an album as a whole, song-by-song, for my first time. I’m not caring about the lyrics for now. Just gonna listen to the music as it is:
—————
Zero
Opening song. Very upbeat. Very nice introduction, gets you in the mood.
Heads Will Roll
The catchy one, for the single and clip. Simply amazing.
Soft Shock
Easy listenable and not so upbeat. The same tiny melody is repeated over and over using sweet samples added as the song advances.
Skeletons
Peaceful. Very post-rock sound and structure (for the general crescendo).
Dull Life
After the calm, the hard beats come. First punk song, contrasting with the previous song and with this song itself.
Shame and Fortune
More rebels and punks.
Runaway
Second “calm” song. The “I hate the world, world hates me” one. More accused crescendo than Skeletons.
Dragon Queen
Repetitive and nonsense filler.
Hysteric
Another calmful one. For once, it does not feel like a post-rock crescendo.
Little Shadow
And, closing the album, the last quiet and post-rock crescendo. The most plain one, if possible.
—————
Conclusions:
Trying to bond upbeat and downbeat songs together.
Amour, Imagination, Rêve. They couldn’t have choiced a better name for this band.
The bass-lines mixed with the jazzy keyboards, both present and driving every song, define the atmospheric, rainy and sexy sound of the group.
This is what drives me to think the way they compose the songs: Godin with the bass guitar, Dunckel with a keyboard, a rainy parisian evening, and everything with a sepia-tone filter.
Only the last two songs (california and brake on), both of which were not present in the original release and were latter added on regular releases, are out of place. Its fast paced and happy-go-lucky feeling have nothing to do with the rest of the work. They feel awkwardly out of place.
