BEAT CONNECTION - SURF NOIR
THE SONG ABOVE IS IN THE WATER
Beat Connection’s debut mini album, Surf Noir has been filling the space between my ears with dreams of hazy stoned summer days for weeks now, and urging me to spend every possible hour outside with a few good friends and a few more warm beers.
Beat connection have created a brilliant new-genre that begs to soundtrack your perfect summer. From the first echoing guitar strums, into the driving simplistic drum beat and then the delicate explosion of the XX-esque riff that dominates the final two minutes, the band who named themselves after LCD Soundsystem’s genre defining album have created an indulgent instrumental sound-scape first track, one that sets the album’s atmosphere and leaves you anticipating more.
On second track In The Water, the electro-pop comparisons are inevitable, but completely unjustified. The groovy hand-plucked bassline, repetitive lyrics and background vocal harmonics do lend their debut single a pop accessibility, but the true beauty of the song lies in its ability to continue building. The bassline evolves and breaks down, joined by a concord of synth noises, ascending vocals and euphoric steel drums. It’s completely infectious, and you find yourself singing along to the repeating chorus in falsetto. By the time it finishes, it is nearly impossible not to hit the repeat button, (which should be done, as the following short track is simply a cacophony of industrial noises.)
Then A Theme From Yours Truly kicks in and you can forgive its immediate onslaught of keyboards and synthesisers, as by now Beat Connections combination of electronic, pop and house music has you completely besotted, held at your own will. It’s the most shamelessly euphoric song on the mini-album, verging on the sort of eighties electro-cheese that made Grand Theft Auto –Vice City such a pleasure to play. At six and a half minutes long, and without any real progression except for a beat-heavy breakdown, it drags on slightly too long, as if ashamed of its electro-pop accusation.
Harshly echoing hand-claps that sound like waves crashing on the shore are joined by a monotonous electronic feedback for Fresh Touch. This gives in to a slow and deliberate drum beat that’s punctuated by a variety of high pitched sounds. Heavily effected vocals speak indiscernible lyrics and the song loses any real direction. This is until a hard drum beat that sounds like a human heart kicking its final life is joined by what sounds like an electronic wood-flute and a high hat picks up the beat and takes the song in a different direction, at least it seems that way, but looking at your music player, you realise that Beat Connection have blended effortlessly into the next track, Silver Screen.
It’s a fractured march, with heavy atmospheric and dragging synths lying in the background of the mix, whilst high-pitched riffs play in the foreground with the most accessible vocal-delivery yet. Just as the song begins to sound perfectly accessible, it becomes littered with sounds fresh from a 16bit console that fluctuate between the front and the background of the mix. An incredibly diverse and interesting song, with the potential to be a smash festival hit.
At just under one and a half minutes, Motorway sounds like the trophy presentation from Mario Kart 64. Despite having several riffs that play off each other, the songs predictable beat and instant flurry conjure the image of a fat Bowser dancing in circles with a trophy spinning above his head. The least successful, and most unnecessary track on Surf Noir.
By the time Same Damn Time kicks in, you haven’t really realised, as you’ve been completely euthanized by its shoegaze charm. That is until two minutes in when the snare becomes sharper and the song is punctuated by sharp and growing synth snaps that are more commonly found in dark dubstep tracks. Again the song breaks down, but this time more menacingly as these dubstep sounds grow in volume and in intensity, Until the whole thing threatens to explode. With an unpredictability common for Surf Noir , the whole song implodes back on itself, returning to the same engulfing riff and placing you back in that hazy summer dreamland.
An incredibly diverse and genre-spanning album, Surf Noir, whilst being slightly too-long and at points spoilt by its own self indulgence, is an album that deserves the opportunity to soundtrack your half-drunk days sat under trees in parks, swigging away at the last flat drops of your last can of beer.
The band play The Old Blue Last on 23rd May.
