Label: Beggars Banquet Format: 12″,CDS
Initially, this is really quite disappointingly normal, especially when compared to the stunningly evocative combination of HipHop rhythms with Isolationist textures which made up the remarkable Beat album a few years back. By contrast “Freedom Fighter” goes for the laid-back, casual-smoking vocal style and ironic personality analysis song-structure of indie trip-hop, but in what feels like a very commercial manner. Which, to be fair, is adequately hooky and nice enough – though nice is always a pretty bland adjective…
It might not exactly be chart material – though you never know these days – by comparison with the usual mass-produced fodder out there, but “Freedom Fighter” is a definite step towards those realms for the band. Still, the remixes (both by Bowery Electric themselves) are reasonable enough, slipping in vocoders and pumping up the reverb in key points, but each version (and for that matter the pleasant enough instrumental “Soul City” which rounds off the EP) ultimately lacks the combination of ennui and a minimalistically-effective rhythmic sensibility which once marked the duo out as something special. The ultimate verdict is that Bowery Electric have gone pop.
-John Palukha-
