KING BRITT - THE INTRICATE BEAUTY - 31.05.10
[Album - Dance/House]
‘The Intricate Beauty’ is the final conventional dance album King Britt will ever make. And how fitting is it that this final chapter also marks King’s first release on seminal house music label Nervous Records.
'The Intricate Beauty' pulls together the different sounds that have inspired Britt over the years.
The process of how this album was constructed is quite advanced.Britt based the album on tiny micro sounds he has collected from various random recordings and CD's. He then took all these tiny pieces and dumped them into Ableton Live where he joined the dots and created about 50 workable combinations of tracks he the constructed the songs musically.
"in a few months I intend to realease all the bits and pieces from the album as a live pack. These will be sounds that people can use for inspiration and production" said Britt.
On the understanding of how Brit has constructed this album I have to say it is very well produced as the continuous mix takes you on a very smooth ride indeed. Starting out with light soulful female vocals over relatively sparse, progressing grooves 'Love What You Have' and 'Now' lead into slightly more Tech-sounding flavours which are graced by the legend Kym English. A true vintage sound with clean production.
20 odd mins in and the percussion picks up merging with the old school US house and garage sounds. 'Keep It Moving' picks the set up and takes us into more solid sounding grooves with tones of proper chicago and detroit styles. There is still a very chilled/smooth flow to the set which hasn't quite drawn me in as yet.
The dub latin flavour of J.Carlos/ zaguirre 'Los' brings away from the soulful sound of the first half of the album and neatly morphs into the broken harsh beats of 'Blackhand Side'. My personal highlight of the album which is a fusion of sharp,cracking snares and old rave synths and basslines.
This meets a vocal dub mix of the classic Byron Stingily's 'Get Up' which is growing on me.
'Peak Inside' is a more driving techno composition, with tough beats and morphing acid synths. It is still , however, quite bland and my initial expectations of this album seem a long way off but that was without the understanding of the construction of this album.
The last section of the set is harder with acid techno reflections and is the most relative for my personal taste but it is still lacking a certain something to make me want to return to.
The album is rounded up by the Title track which is a chilled female affair with decent instrumentation and lush strings but again i still feel that the 'journey' i have been on is not one i'll revisit.
'The Intricate Beauty' is a nice sounding album and very well produced/created but will have limited appeal to most fans.
Words by Scuttler
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