FLIPSIDE – DEEP (LOADSTAR RECORDS)
October 3rd, 2004 by soyo
OK! No beating about the bush; last years debut album from Flipside ‘Inside’ was one of my favourites, and ‘Deep’ more or less follows the same musical path, which is fine by me. For anyone that was lucky enough to get hold of ‘Inside’ (it didn’t really get the most widespread distribution) or saw them at Big Chill 2003 and 2004 and enjoyed them, news of a new Flipside release is welcome indeed.
Klaus Bau and Sebastien Lilja, the duo behind Flipside, are pretty adept at creating melancholic, contemplative yet uplifting downtempo loveliness. Restrained guitars, beautiful minimal trumpet playing, warm strings all held together with slow beats and oozing washes, lend weight to the ‘less is more’ theory.
As with the previous album ‘Inside’, there are no bouncy, foot tappers or up-tempo numbers, not many laughs and no junk shop discovery samples. Flipside take their chilling very seriously. But while all the tracks are very chilled, each one possesses more than enough depth to prevent them from sounding boring or even clichéd.
Tracks like ‘Sunday’ and ‘Are You There’ are testament to just how serious they are. The fact that these tunes hit your ambient bone and reverberate deep inside your cells with an almost scientific accuracy is probably testament to Klaus and Sebastian’s study of music through classical training. Like ‘Inside’, ‘Deep’ is a head on, no-mercy chillout album that is not ashamed to be so.
Being a little more impartial I would have to say that ‘Deep’ is possibly not as strong as ‘Inside’. ‘Are you OK?’ plods and meanders a little, and ’35mm’ doesn’t really find its feet until late into the track. The guitar melodies don’t seem to get a chance to enter your head this time and overall there seems a little more ambient space in the tunes. These are minor annoyances as ‘It’s OK’ gets you pert and perky again, as does the snaking, swirling ‘Hum Hub Hush Dub’. ‘Adagio (for Valdemar)’ is a return top drawer chillage to bring a beautiful album to a blissful conclusion.
Soyo
Flipside’s ‘Deep’ is out 11th October on Loadstar Records
