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Average: 4.0 (105 ratings)
- Date Released: May 13, 2008
- Genre: Electronic
- Style: Downtempo
- Label: !K7 Records
Head-spinning sample-slaw exotica, courtesy of the artist also known as Radio Slave.
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We Say...
In dance music, the pseudonym reigns supreme. So it's not surprising to learn that half of the duo Quiet Village is Matt Edwards, the British DJ-producer who’s worked under numerous monikers; he’s best known for the frequently brilliant singles he’s put out as Radio Slave. (He also issued a legendary Kylie/New Order mash-up under that name.) The attention to detail Edwards shows on Radio Slave tracks like "Bell Clap Dance" and "My Bleep" makes Silent Movie, the first album he's released with Quiet Village partner Joel Martin, less surprising than it might be — but only slightly. Martin is a former film editor who venerates cutout soundtrack and cheesy-listening vinyl as much as his partner does, and they fill Silent Movie with enough out-of-nowhere snippets to turn even obviously familiar elements on their head.
The album is an exercise in opulence. "Victoria's Secret" opens things with gulls and waves lapping ashore alongside serene strings and woodwinds. But it’s also slightly seasick, befitting its despondent source material, the Chi-Lites' "Coldest Day of My Life." Similar strings underpin "Circus of Horror," but the main attraction there is a guttural guitar riff reminiscent equally of blaxploitation-soundtrack funk and hairy ’70s sludge-rock. “Free Rider” crosses trip-hop atmospherica, stoned acoustic folk, wah-wah guitar that calls to mind the lonesome whistle from Ennio Morricone spaghetti western themes and oddly unsettling crowd noises. "Singing Sand" sounds like its title. Chimes, pitter-patting bongos, filtered whispered exhales, sideways strings and a ponderous piano line — on paper, it seems like treacle, but the elements are arranged to unsettle, and succeed.
Of course, flirting with cheese means you sometimes fall in — "Keep on Rolling" is a little too yacht-rock for its own good, for example, even if that's its explicit goal. But at its frequent best, Silent Movie is head-spinning, sample-slaw exotica, one of the best albums of its type this side of the Avalanches' debut. -
They Say...
Joel Martin and Matt Edwards take their alias from Martin Denny's exotica landmark, yet their approach can be likened -- not just through the title but in its sound as well -- to "Quiet Pillage," the slack but unease-inducing interpretation of "Quiet Village" by experimentalist post-punks 23 Skidoo. Beneath the track list of Silent Movie, an album highlighted by material released in small runs on 12" during 2005 and 2006, the duo thanks "everyone that's been involved in making this album. You know who you are." It's probable that not everyone knows who they are, at least not in this case. The most creative and affecting sample-reliant album since the Avalanches' Since I Left You, Silent Movie plucks from numerous forms of marginalia, whether obscure, loathed by the stereotypical record store clerk, or loved by legions of geeks who were dealt wedgies in high school by Van Halen-loving jocks: prog rock and yacht rock punch lines, new age pin cushions, unhip singer/songwriters, largely unknown Italian film-music composers, and several others. For the most part, these sources are not so uncool that they are cool. They are so uncool that they are... extremely uncool. Unlike the giddy non-stop carnival atmosphere of Since I Left You, Silent Movie is, for lack of better categorization, a chillout album, even though it is just as much a creep-out, its most tranquil scenes seemingly on the verge of being washed away by a sudden ecological catastrophe. With the exception of "Circus of Horror" -- scuzzy hurtling-through-a-dustbowl psych rock, replete with the howls of a man who sounds like he has been pitched into the Grand Canyon -- and "Gold Rush" -- a dead ringer for Scenic's epic, tribal desert scores -- everything passes with the force of a light breeze, evoking swaying hammocks, sun-bleached picnics, beached isolation, states of half-awake delirium, and the slowest-moving groups of stoned dancers imaginable. Though the new tracks, including the impossibly lush "Broken Promises" and the sparkling but arid "Singing Sand," could hardly be accused of weighing down the album, it's the previously released material that stands out most. Best of all is "Pillow Talk," a reconfiguration of the Alan Parsons Project's "Voyager/What Goes Up..." that can be disorienting in the most sterile environments. Bonus: it sounds like it was put together to flow directly into the Passions' "I'm in Love with a German Film Star."
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You Say...
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TRACK UNAVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD
One or more tracks from this album are unavailable for download at this time.
| 01. |  |
Victoria's Secret |
3:32 |  |
| 02. | |
Circus Of Horror |
4:49 | |
| 03. | |
Free Rider |
4:20 | |
| 04. | |
Too High To Move |
6:41 | |
| 05. | |
Pacific Rhythm |
4:29 | |
| 06. | |
Broken Promises |
5:47 | |
| 07. | |
Pillow Talk |
5:07 | |
| 08. | |
Can't Be Beat |
5:46 | |
| 09. | |
Gold Rush |
5:25 | |
| 10. | |
Singing Sand |
5:08 | |
| 11. |
Utopia |
5:03 | ||
| 12. | |
Keep On Rolling |
3:47 | |
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12 Total Tracks, 59:54 Total Length
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Credits
- Matt Edwards - Producer // Joel Martin - Producer
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