Artist.......: HervΘ
Album........: The Art Of Disappearing
Label........: Cheap Thrills
Genre........: Electronic
Catnr........: n/a
source.......: CDDA
rip.date.....: Apr-19-2013
str.date.....: 2013
quality......: VBR/44.1Hz/Joint-Stereo
Url..........: n/a
track title time
01. bears 03:59
02. lose control (feat. seasfire) 03:52
03. worry crow 02:54
04. gold (feat. maria minerva) 04:17
05. feels like i'm coming down 03:24
06. mountains 03:58
07. save me (feat. austra) 03:55
08. red tractor 02:42
09. mother protect (feat. niki and the dove) 03:47
Runtime 32:48 min
Size 58,3 MB
Release Notes:
And then there are the ones who're just trying too
hard. Josh "Herve" Harvey leads the chaotic life of
a producer, DJ, remixer and is also one half of The
Count & Sinden, whose album Mega Mega Mega caused a
frisson of anticipation back in 2010.
Quite why he'd want to jack all that in is anyone's
guess, even temporarily, but a hiatus has been
called, starting the process of making a record
which isn't so much out of character as off the
programme entirely. As unexpected as it might be
confusing to fans, The Art of Disappearing probably
illustrates why it's sometimes good to be your own
label boss (Harvey also runs the Cheap Thrills
imprint), as under a different regime, it might've
been a difficult pitch.
Basically then, the story is this: once upon a time
in British music there was bass, bass, and more
bass, and some of the banger jammers decided that
it was time for something "Different". In Harvey's
case, though, this is half the problem: what he and
the various collaborators here have come up with is
locked in the post trip hop miasma of the late
90's, the kind of thing your Olives, Smoke Cities
or Sneaker Pimps came up with once upon a time.
Ironically, The Art of Disappearing manages to
capture the imagination best during the moments
that the hired help are sidelined. When just knob
twiddling, Harvey finds the essence of the
"Haunting" feel he was going for: Worry Crow
stomps, essentially a thunderous hip hop break just
waiting to be battle rapped over, whilst the sludgy
chromatics of Red Traktor sound like they were made
on a fire damaged laptop using haunted software.
With the singers in? It's all just a little
unadventurous, perhaps to be expected given the man
behind the mixing board's CV. Seasfire does her
best Skye Edwards turn on the glossy,
Morcheeba-esque Lose Control, but Maria Minerva
can't prevent Gold being a 24 carat dud, meanwhile
the histrionics Austra's Katie Stelmanis on Save Me
had me convinced she was singing next to a
cauldron.
Why there's such a gulf in imagination between the
laptop stuff and the "Real" songs on The Art of
Disappearing isn't clear, and there can't be any
doubt that Josh Harvey has the ability. But until
he starts asking more of both the guests and
himself, this new path seems to add up to little
more than a blind alley.