Playlouder - Music is the Network

Cast your mind back to 2003….

You might remember there was a fairly short lived novelty sampling craze created by bands like Royskopp, Lemon Jelly and…ok mainly Royskopp and Lemon Jelly. The samples, sometimes quirky, sometimes very poignant, were married to ambient, sometimes bouncing melodies often to very great effect.

It didn’t last long, Lemon Jelly soon moved on and Royskopp, their songs having been exhausted on various adverts, found their audience turning harshly against them. But now it’s 2008, and it seems that Future Loop Foundation are a little behind the times.

Sure, there’s nothing wrong with being out of step with fashion, some bands have done very well avoiding trends and conventions, but on The Fading Room it feels though this is a formula that’s rather tired. The concept is that these aren’t just random samples; these are tapes of family interviews recovered from an attic somewhere ‘up north’, now brought to life with beautiful atmospheric music. Problem is that so often the voices are buried so far within the mix that you can’t hear them.

Furthermore, some of the reminiscences which are audible, are given a very predictable ambient treatment. Touching tales of wartime life are reducing to nothing more to being and sounding like novelty samples, which seems rather against the point of it all.

There are a few moments which elevate the album above being thrown on the ‘who cares’ pile.  Sunshine Philosophy builds up to something spectacular, but a few tracks later it retreads the same predictable territory at its climax.  Pleasant, but not as inspiring as it thinks it is.