There are many who, when faced with something new that they like, get excited, thrilled, and let the whole world know their joy and happiness for having discovered that something, as quickly as possible. I belong to that group of people, hopefully as numerous as they are silent, who, when confronted with something new, retreat, question themselves and, almost ashamed of their surprise, try to analyze the reasons for their liking, alongside a search in their formative experiences.
"The Richest Man in Babylon" was released last fall, and I was immediately captivated by its refinement and originality, in that order. Only now, after having it accompany me on average every week, after analyzing it in a meticulous way, do I begin to define the traits of this work that, I hope time won't prove me wrong, should be placed among the best products of lounge music so popular at the moment, if not the best of all.
The first characteristic of the music in this work that strikes is the warmth it manages to convey : absorbing and making those influences of sounds and melodies its own, which, although born in the most disparate parts of the world have made it past the music production filter, the New York duo makes them their own and reworks them, weaving with these sounds a complex, rich, very refined but not baroque, and always proportionate fabric. All this translates into that feeling that I cannot express with a better term than "warmth". Undoubtedly, contributing significantly to this effect is the overture with the exquisite voice of the Italo-Irish Torrini, where, together with the final track, the two wise authors touch the most "popular" point of their electronic style, in the "Air" style, so to speak. In this way, they give a decided imprint to the development of the entire work in a Euro-American key, with symmetrically wide intervals and dreamy little voices, but definite electric piano and bass and substantially dry drums. Still, perhaps with the exception of "the Outernationalist", a track for which a "re-soaking" effort is not enough to smooth off the typical splinters of the dub root, every track on this album is pervaded by a gentleness and a delicacy that dominate the scene. And note well that, unlike many other works in the same genre, this happens regardless of the voice interpreting the different tracks or the veins of styles, not nuances, that pervade the tracks themselves.
I was surprised by how this characteristic remains unchanged even when changing the order of listening to the tracks. The work of cleaning up the almost funk arrangements of "Liberation Front" and urban (or trip-hop or whatever you like) arrangements of the title track and "The State Of The Union" is astonishing: to achieve such results, perfect mastery of electronic instrumentation is not enough, or perhaps not even necessary, but a vast musical culture, as well as a full knowledge of all the phases that have gone through the best world dance halls, in addition to good taste, is indispensable. And I find in good taste another characteristic of this work that belongs to a genre that offers little and only occasionally.
Starting from the aforementioned difference between the "veins" present here and the "nuances", which are too often recurrent in other similar works, I could write much more to demonstrate those parts of originality that meet in the work. Unfortunately, with the same evidence, the limits also appear (which I would attribute to the lack of serious in-depth studies on the products that inspired the creation of "The Richest Man In Babylon"). These same limits also constitute the only handicap of the album, otherwise a pure masterpiece that would transcend the boundaries of its genre .
A single note for "Meu Destino", a track sung in Portuguese (it is not the only one, there are also a couple sung in French) that, to someone in the refrain may remind something of the better Gragnaniello, touches a particular moment at minute 1.50, in the transition from pure bossanova to electronic: a moment that encapsulates rhythm (bossa), sweetness (insertion in the structure), expressiveness (the voice), energy (electric piano)... a moment that anyone wanting to connect with the genre cannot forget. Then you listen to "Exilo" and pull out the last bank statement from the drawer, letting yourself be gripped by the sadness of not being able to scrounge up those 1500 euros to go to Brazil...
A pleasant, delicate, homogeneous album, never identical to itself. It deserves to be listened to and re-listened to several times with the same attention.
Tracklist
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