AlunaGeorge
Your Drums, Your Love

I am currently still in REM phase regarding commercial success, charts, and the millions of copies pocketed, yet they have already demonstrated their ability to inherit the English synth-pop tradition and to revive a genre that across the ocean has experienced the most disheartening batterings. Aluna Francis and George Reid are two youngsters who, for the baptism of their duo, chose to simply combine their names, a choice probably dictated by an almost exhausted catalog of possible new nomenclatures destined for musical collectives. She is the vocalist, he the producer, and AlunaGeorge immediately bring to mind the semi-defunct Morcheeba and the singer Skye during the happiest period of their career. Indeed, the link between the duo and the British band leverages the national electronic tradition and the various and genuine contaminations with the rock world, the ethereal sounds and the R&B and Hip-Hop showcase.

"Your Drums, Your Love", a track released last year, is the first single to have, albeit minimally, captured the public's attention towards AlunaGeorge. The piece is a delightful synth-R&B blend with rich ambient, garage, and trip hop nuances combined into a highly effective ballad. A precious bridge between the "experimentation" of the 90s and the subsequent profusions and multi-sound unions of today, Your Drums, Your Love shines for its electronic approach that is absolutely not obvious, banal, or lamentably manipulable by the dance floors. Instead, it seems to favor the mystical, ethereal, almost heavenly aura of Björk, perhaps a bit more "pop." To compensate for all this goodness is the promotional video, a sort of videographic metaphor of a love-sentiment union (in this case between the beautiful Aluna and the shy George), set in a museum. This union is unable to be crowned as every attempt at approach between the two is "stopped" by a series of dancers engaged in frenetic, discontinuous plastic poses.

"Your Drums, Your Love" will be included in the duo's debut album, "Body Music", still in production. AlunaGeorge do not intend to withdraw from the scene until the dawn of their actual debut, and they have already released a new track, Attracting Flies, at the crossroads of R&B, trip hop, funky, and urban with a decidedly more danceable vein, although far from europop aberrations and the like. As already noted, the collective has not yet experienced a commendable popular response, but it has already received several praises from authoritative musical tabloids and has conquered a top five with the track White Noise by the house-electronic band Disclosure, whose productions - debuting as well - are markedly different from the Ibiza ecstasy and the likes of Guetta. They attempt to recover the English synth-garage tradition that in recent years has shrunk considerably and made room for the almost schizophrenic recovery of the '80s glitter.

All that remains is to wait for the release of "Body Music", the final report card of a couple who, in its own small way, has managed to fire its firecracker into a sky overly lit by the fireworks, sometimes undeserved, of their peers.