Audio By Carbonatix
Far too many musicians are scared to death of “What the hell?” moments — those times when a song’s sudden shift into unexpected territory leaves listeners puzzled and slack-jawed, for good or ill. In contrast, Gary Cobain and Brian Dougans thrive on such reactions. Since the early ’90s, the electro-obsessed mixologists behind Future Sound of London have followed their own peculiar muse without regard to consistency, cohesiveness or common sense — and thank heaven for that. This latest epic won’t thrill everyone; the music may strike some fans as opulent and intriguing, others as merely self-indulgent. But the Futurists’ unwillingness to settle for predictability gives Amorphous an undeniable charge.
“Elysian Feels,” the initial cut, has the quasi-ambient feel of earlier FSOL masterworks, mating keyboard washes with a shuffling backbeat, guitar noodling and random effects that ebb and flow in a surprisingly organic manner. “Yo-Yo,” which follows, takes a different route. The number dives headlong into psychedelia via lyrics about “electric ego” and an atmospheric melody that moves at a spacey pace through a thicket of synthetic dollops, snippets and burbles. Just as trippy are “Goodbye Sky,” with its faux brass fanfares and munificent use of echo; the sitar-happy “Maharishi Raga”; and “Theram,” which puts drum-and-bass beats in a retro context that drags the past into the present and vice-versa.
Some of the curveballs tossed by Cobain and Dougans slide off the plate — “The Conga Run,” for example, whose guitar solo is tasty in the vapid, smooth-jazz meaning of the term. But better a group try to explore too many musical avenues than putt along the same dead-end street. If given a choice between Otherness and sameness, pick the former.
