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Homelife | Flying Wonders

What Lambchop might have sounded like had they come from the Brazilian corner of Manchester
CD, Ninja Tune/Zomba

Tekst: Edward Dekeyser

Publicatiedatum: 04 oktober 2002

Homelife is not a definite entity. We're talking acoustic-electronic bricolages here, and nearly every Homelife track has a different line up. Less like a collective, Homelife is like a pool of musicians whose talents are marshalled by reluctant foreman Paddy Steer. The project revolves around Paddy Steer (bass), Tony Burnside and Simon King (both guitar). They write and produce most of the songs although other individuals contribute in an organic composition process. Half of the band plays in the related Toolshed project, fronted by 808 State's Graham Massey, and he returns the favour by contributing clarinet and saxophone. In 1985 Paddy joined Yargo where he met Tony Burnside. He describes their music as 'sparse, dubby, funky'. Justin Robertson, who remixed a Yargo track but never met the band at the time, asked Paddy to join Lionrock in 1996 after the first album. It's an ongoing open ended, if dormant, arrangement.

After opener Flying Wonders -with it's whiny male voice sample indeed an intro worth of standing next to Jazzanova's L.O.V.E. You and I-, Chinese tonal chords and bluesy slide-guitar falsettos score off each other in Buffalos, an intelligent take on what lounge music could have been, would it not have been predestined to be ever so lush. Try Again, avant-garde melancholy driven by a gypsy-like violin, makes a nice precursor for one of the album highlights Seedpod. Again a whiny voice, combined with some cartoonesque violin background, bursts into a bossa-driven jam where sounds of ticking spoons and violin-pizzi try to get hold of the shifting melodies beneath and in between. And on top of that, the musical-like teasing vocals of Seaming To play the role of chanteuse, making Seedpod one of the most inventive tracks we've heard in a while.

Vocal contributions on this album really stand out. Fairweather View is blessed with Faron Brooks' vocal talents- think Joseph Malik on Compost or Hubert Tubbs' contribution on Stereotype's latest album-. A track containing such simple yet recognisable guitar-plucking that didn't go unnoticed as it's inclusion on the first Playground mix compilation by Les Gammas on the ecco.chamber label proves.
In Fruit Machine, Seaming To repeats her vocal trickery, supported by acoustic guitars and -again- the weirdest percussion in ages. But in no way their experimentalism and inventivity stands in the way of the functionality of song and vibe. Maybe some interludes are a bit sour to digest, but after all, that's why they are limited to interludes.
Too fast takes care of another personal fav, the ubiquitous nervous background percussion being traded in in favor of a straight, lazy breakbeat giving more space to Seaming To's heavenly vocals, creating levels of blueness normally courtesy of Erykah or Billie.

This album has -beside the vocal share- more similarities with releases like Flanger than with Ninja (Zen)'s latest releases by The Herbaliser or DSP. Ninja Tune itself likes to think of them as what Lambchop might have sounded like had they come from the Brazilian corner of Manchester. A Mancunian recipe for disaster?

http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/homelife/flying-wonders/1921/
Meer Homelife op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/homelife