Christmas morning was hotly anticipated by Gorillaz fans in 2010, as the promised free albumThe Fall became available to fan club members but after Santa snatched his cookies and dropped his load. For some, the event is a stripped & exhilarating journey of digital experimentation and venture on the route in unfamiliar territories. For others, it`s a blow of self-indulgent minimalist electronic meandering with mere shades of promise.
Walking the melody is an interesting challenge that depends mostly on the listener`s mood.
When approached free of context as a replacement to Plastic Beach, the album is a bizarre disappointment, a music-app album sketchbook riddled with acoustics, melodica, ukelele and a blizzard of Korg/Moog synths. That`s an unfairly dismissive depiction, however, given that - as frontman Damon Albarn promised early on - The Light is a piece of fifteen road-diary tracks, loaded with atmospheric grooves and ambient textures to stir a timepiece feeling rather than get home an aesthetic point.
There`s certainly a personal atmosphere to the totality of The Fall, which largely consists of instrumentally-driven stripped songs that set the drainage of electro-pop without fully taking the plunge into the over-pillaged mundanity of a genre that Radiohead set flame to with Kid A, and a hundred thousand bands have since hammered to death while surfing the hipster tides.
Spanning and weaving blip-groove designs between the galaxies of pop, hip-hop, dubstep and thoughtful acoustics, The Fall - recorded with iPad applications during the group`s North American tour in the 2nd half of the year - is a mix of non-contextually dismissible instrumental/sound collage tracks and beautiful, if understated, rainy-day melodies. Hints of modern Brit-pop that follow the Plastic Beach lineage - such as the gorgeously dreamy uke/synth creeping chant of "Revolving Doors" or future-spazz key freakout of The Serpent In Dallas - are countered by slow-beat stony experimentals like "Little Pink Plastic Bags" and the apocalyptic breeze of"Amarillo". It`s a fascinating mix, but ultimately outweighed by its own wasted electro-meandering, most clearly defined in "The Mouth It Mountains and California" And "The Slipping Of The Sun" (let`s just not discuss the yodel-fest final track).
Albarn remains true to the Gorillaz architectural sound aesthetic, which along with its contextual origins qualify the show for the trademark title. The homemade vibe, slightly lo-fi but dodging an air of cheapness, will give off the uninformed listener who`s anticipating the next"Stylo" or, somehow even still, holding out for another"19-2000".
Admittedly, disappointment did set in the forenoon before release when bass-heavy dark-shade instrumental"Phoner To Arizona" teased the album ahead of its delivery. Simply designed soft-fuzz beats, synth riffs and, eventually, mangled vocals serve only as a cold-electro introduction to the album, setting the palette tone by jarring expectations off the rails immediately.
As The Fall unfolds, it becomes clear that initial impressions are not to be trusted, for both near and ill.
The aching beauty of "Hillbilly Man"`s dream-gliding opening riff is wasted a moment in, when a sudden change to minimalist reggae-dub invokes an altogether different sensation beneath Albarn`s road-ragged falsetto. Unfortunately it brings to head the "to the left, to the left, to the proper_" portion of that hellish old "Tootsee Roll" track. Not a welcome reminder of the pep-rally horrors of 1994.
The electronic strength of The Light hits a high stride in "The Joplin Spider," a haunting collage of voices and whispered synths before a buzz-shock tone jars the senses clear for a highly infective nightmare-rowboat nursery rhyme. Like lots of the album, the song teases greatness, hitting a crown of impeccable design amidst a tempest of relatively disposable sonic accompaniments.
In "Aspen Forest," the looped sound of electronic interference usually heard just before a nearby cellphone rings is supplemented by 8-bit blipping computer scales, giving way to a thumping piano melody. Then, without warning, a right-hook of soul comes by way of "Bobby in Phoenix," featuring touring partner and Plastic Beach guest Bobby Womack doing what he does best over a slow-croon acoustic and seashore sound effects, a half-sibling to "Empire Ants".
As a cellophane decoration description, The Fall sounds just like what it consists of: the self-indulgent time-passing recordings of a prodigally prolific musician flexing a high-stride point in his career, having interpreted the clock to give himself to the unknown American landscape unfolding before him across the miles between shows and see them through his own artistic lens. It`s a lovely Christmas gift, a stripped experiment free of the standard frills and studio polish that puts a more intimate, if less magnetic, shine on the Gorillaz aesthetic.
Happy New Year!
Info on each dog and credit/liner notes for The Flow is available here.
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