A sublime aural cocktail (Thievery Corporation in general)

Name: miriamb

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Product:	Thievery Corporation in general
Date:	07/06/02 (99 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: beautiful

Disadvantages: never enough

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce you to Rob Garza and Eric Hilton, collectively known as The Thievery Corporation…

The place is Washington DC, the year is 1995: welcome to the Eighteenth Street Lounge, a jazz and bossa nova club part owned by Eric Hilton. A certain Mr Rob Garza enters the club to speak with Hilton, as has been suggested by mutual friends. As they chat, they are united by a shared love of Brazilian bossa and down-tempo dub. And the Thievery Corp starts to take shape.

Despite both having separate musical commitments, they worked well together, and their first release came out in January of the following year. Now, I don’t own this, so I can’t tell you about the B-sides and remixes, but I don’t really fancy doing a release by release wander through their career anyway (we’d be here forever!). So, all you’ll hear about from me are the two ‘proper’ albums, one mix album, and the remix album. And that should satisfy you for starters. I’ll try to do them in chronological order but my copies give slightly different release dates to the dooyoo listings so forgive me if they don’t match what’s in the category.

Ok. Well, we’ll start at the beginning. In 1998, ‘Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi’ was launched on the world. This contained the first ever Thievery Corp release, a 12" entitled ‘2001 Spliff Odyssey’. Now just in case you didn’t glean anything from the title, this is a really chilled, smooth, sit-back-and-relax track, and is pretty typical of the whole album. Expect to find the album to be an enchanting mix of Latin and urban sounds, very gentle on the ear, but captivating for the soul. Imagine you’re in a salsa club, it’s late and things are starting to wind down, the excitable sweatiness has died down to a gentle, sensual shuffle… and here we are. Deep bass runs through you and you
’re at that tired but still having a really good time stage. This album is, in my opinion, the ultimate Thievery Corp CD, effortlessly breezing you away to a nice, warm, comfortable place, where the world is good, and despite your fatigue you can’t help but sway to the music. Well this is what it is to me anyway.

Fourteen tracks of bossa, sampled, rolling and blissful, tinged in parts with the more aggressive aspects of Latin music, the Cuban influence with the trumpet refrains, and more than a side serving of Rasta-style reggae and dub. Stand out tracks are difficult to identify because the album as a whole is of such high quality, but if pushed, I’d probably go for ‘2001 spliff odyssey’ and ‘38.45 (A thievery number)’ just because they epitomise ‘Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi’. All said, it’s beautiful, baby. Enjoy.

I’m sorry to pull you out of the sunshine there, but I’ve got to move on the next release, which by my copy, is ‘Abductions and Reconstructions’ (1999), the remix album. Now, if ‘Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi’ sounded a bit too hectic for you, don’t worry. ‘Abductions’ somehow manages to slow everything down and draw it out. You know that feeling of being half-asleep, of dropping off in a room late at night, surrounded by people? When their conversations, still going on around you, seem as though they’ve travelled through a long tunnel before reaching your ears? Or when you wake up in the morning, and a crisp spring sun looks all misty and ethereal through the curtains and your sleepy eyes? Well that’s ‘Abductions’.

It consists of 15 tracks by artists as diverse as David Byrne, Black Uhuru, Baaba Maal, and Rockers Hi-Fi, remixed in the way that only the Thievery Corp can. Soulful tracks are enhanced, energetic tracks are brought down a peg or two, and that lovely Latin i
nfluence reigns supreme. Oh I haven’t described this very well, but I hope you get the idea anyway. Stand out tracks are again, difficult to decide upon, but this time that’s mainly because these tracks are all originally by different artists and so have different starting points, albeit all have been given the Thievery Corp flavour. I would pick out the Baaba Maal track, ‘I will follow you (Souka nayo)’ and Avatars of Dub, ‘Sexelevatormuzik’, for their gently hypnotic nature, and Rockers Hi-Fi ‘Transmission central’ and Black Uhuru’s ‘Boof n’ baff n’ biff’ for the more dubby, reggae-ification, verging on the ska side of things. Nice.

Next, but also released in 1999, comes the Thievery Corp’s mix CD, produced for the German label Studio K7! as part of the acclaimed DJ Kicks series. For those uninitiated to the world of DJ Kicks, suffice to say that although each one delivers the individual sound and interest of whoever’s made it (and they range from Kruder & Dorfmeister, DJ Cam, Kid Loco, Nightmares on Wax… you get the picture), they are all exceptional quality. This is no different.

A more upbeat sound develops through the eighteen track mix, starting with the sexy bossa and sublime strings of the first track, progressing up to the dancefloor frenzy of Thievery Corp’s own ‘Coming from the top’, throwing in some Da Lata and Jazzanova for good measure, and slowly bringing you back down courtesy of the deep dub sounds of the final three tracks. This is an album that I listen to either side of a night out, it’s the getting ready music, and it’s the coming home and chilling music. What that says about me I’d hate to think, what it says about the CD is that it’s whatever you want it to be..! Oh, and you know that beer commercial on TV when the feng shui men come in and take the man’s furniture away,
leaving him just with a beer filled fridge and a chair? Well the music from that ad is track 8, ‘Exploration’ by The Karminsky Experience Inc. Just in case you had wondered!

Right. Now that only leaves us with one CD, ‘The Mirror Conspiracy’ (2000). I was really excited about this being released - I’d heard one track, ‘Lebanese blonde’ and loved it, a really pleasing blend of eastern sitars and husky vocals. When the album had actually come out, though, and I’d brought it home and had a listen, I have to say I was a little disappointed.

All but gone was the shake-yer-booty dub, and this thirteen track album seems infinitely more restrained, for want of a better word. It is, I suppose, a bit more grown-up, a bit more dinner party than hanging around at your mate’s. It’s more orientated towards the female vocal, which was practically absent in the earlier releases. This album seems to have gone more global, with Indian, North African, and Middle Eastern influences, which perhaps explains the difference in part. Replacing the dub is a more refined, exotic sound, slower in pace, more overtly melodic, and dappled throughout with the sitar and ‘proper’ percussion.

Stand out tracks on here would probably be ‘Lebanese blonde’, due to its sheer brilliance; ‘So com voce’, for a reflective and beautiful return to bossa; the subtle funk of ‘Hong Kong triad’; and the title track, ‘The mirror conspiracy’, because it emphasises the sophisticated elegance of the CD.

Think of this, if you will, as the understated, floaty-gowned glamour of Gwyneth Paltrow, as opposed to the earlier urban sounds, akin to Angelina Jolie’s street-smart Lara Croft. Both excellent, but completely different. I should probably point out that once I’d accepted that ‘The Mirror Conspiracy’ was not an extension of t
he earlier jaunts, I actually really like it.

The Thievery Corporation are so called because, quite simply, they thieve. They pinch sounds and influences from all over the place, chuck everything they’ve magpied together, add a pinch of themselves, and bring forth a really unique sound. I’m a lazy girl at heart, I like things easy, stress-free and I hate anything that’s too noisy or boisterous. Which is probably why the Thievery Corp are a perennial favourite in my home.

They've also released a compliation album of 15 tracks from the great jazz label Verve, called 'Sounds from the Verve Hi-Fi' (2001). But I don't own it (yet) so I can't comment. I hear it's very good though.

Last but not least, for the cocktail of the title: Blend old school Latin jazz, eastern exoticism, Jamaican dub, mix thoroughly in a contemporary western studio, and serve in a chilled glass around about sunset on a summer day. And relax...




For more information about…
…The Thievery Corporation, go to www.eslmusic.com
…Studio K7! / DK Kicks series, go to www.studio-k7.com
…Similar styles and full discography, go to www.allmusic.com and search for Thievery Corporation


By the way, this is my first foray into the world of the music review. So be nice!

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