Simian Mobile Disco-Half James Ellis Ford has produced alongside notable indie greats and long-established mainstream institutions like the Arctic Monkeys, Foals, Florence and the Machine, Depeche Mode, Haim, Gorillaz, KlaxonsJessie Ware, Kylie Minogue or the Pet Shop Boys helped to brilliant deeds. Now he joins Hum (after a first EP a few months ago) found his first solo album.
With such prominent names in the Rolodex, it’s no wonder that Ford naturally felt they could put together an album with a staggering list of guest features. Can you hear it now? The Humbut it is not surprising that in view of the very intimate, downright unspectacular charisma of a warm-inviting, calm and relaxed debut solo long-player who displays an almost sedatively deliberate modesty, he decided against it and preferred half of the tracks discovered his own voice, which was not very rousing, but which was just right for the aesthetics.
For I Never Wanted Anythingwhich for its sense of rhythm, a little jamming, kept the memory of ’00s dancepunk far in the background, just looking at it through a now dozing prism in which Deus her dance ambitions sometimes in the LCD Soundsystem-rest room should accompany; the somnambulist rattling waves Squeaky Wheel; the beatlesque babbling 60s pop idea Golden Hourthe piano balladesque Flaming Lips-Seance Emptiness or the rather overwhelmingly forgiving dismissal Closing Time, all of which concretize melodies that have fallen out of time and serve pleasant, but admittedly fleeting, hooks. They let themselves be carried away with simple amusement in nocturnal longing through the opening act of Tame Impala drive – and fit harmoniously into the remaining, purely instrumental structure of Hum a.
Where the peacefully meandering, curious ambient opener Tape Loop #7 in seamless flow to Pillow Village transitions, guitar and saxophone into a nonchalantly cinematic, restrained orchestral mood of optimism without any haste, a smooth drum beat not far from Tranquility Base Hotel + Ca(r)sino retrofuturistic in the general deceleration of The Hum as dozing lounge music ripples meditatively, blissfully with almost hippie-esque mental cinema elegy a la Midlake schippert.
Except for the thought-lost title track trance as a latently redundant, but above all slowing down the only hesitant momentum, Ford sets such skilful accents in the further course of the finely balanced arc of suspense and the inconspicuously submerged dynamics.
The herbaceous Caterpillar maintains a casual funk groove, as if it would feel at home in a 70s crook-heist series – but without that out of the ordinary The Hum to fall – and thus to a certain extent the thread that mischievously shakes with oriental psychedelic, but repeats its pattern too often The Yips spins on. The fact that Ford only too cautiously hints at the feverishly suggested jazz kaleidoscope is just as symptomatic of the great weakness of the record: The Hum always remains too pleasingly reserved, never lets himself be lured out of his reserve or sit up and take notice with really outstanding ideas. Perhaps at least one or the other feature would have been a good idea to add any creative friction points.
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