| Product: |
Fantasmagorie - Akurat |
| Date: |
04/12/07 (106 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Fun and skilfully executed modern ska tunes.
Disadvantages: Indecipherable lyrics (for non-Poles) and less imaginative reggae sections.
The third album from Poland's ska-punk-reggae-pop band Akurat provides thirteen more songs that continue to mix their various influences in various ways, with varying degrees of success. Released on the prominent Polish label Metal Mind, the album has a great polished (Polished?) production sound suited to the light, jangly ska guitars and prominent brass, but is also fully capable of delivering a more powerful kick on the rare occasions this is necessary. Tinged with pop vocal melodies to keep it accessible, this album should appeal to all fans of the lighter side of reggae-influenced ska, as long as non-Polish speakers don't mind not being able to understand a word that's being said.
The band is fronted by Tomasz Klaptocz, whose vocals are soft and pleasant enough to retain commercial appeal, and occasionally veer into a slightly irritating/relaxing (depending on your point of view) easy listening murmur. Klaptocz also provides the trumpets, mostly used sparingly to add the rhythm section but occasionally - increasingly it seems, as the album approaches the end - substituting for a lead instrument in place of the guitars. The trumpets, along with the saxophone and flute occasionally provided by Przemyslaw Zwias, add a nice sense of depth and variety to what would otherwise be a fairly standard happy rock album, and as much as they may irritate listeners who aren't fond of horns, their careful and comparatively limited presence manages to convey a range of emotions and give English listeners a clue as to the mood or subject of each song.
The whole ska/reggae thing is obviously a very old and clichéd sound so many years down the line, and this album never strives to achieve anything unrealistically original, instead working to perfect the band's own hybrid of the sound, moving away from their punk roots towards a more mainstream direction with no loss of talent or creativity. There's a very obvious shift between slower, chilled-out reggae offerings and happy, bouncy ska-pop, but most impressive of all are the songs that fall somewhere between, or incorporate further, odder influences into the mix. The genre's customary jangly guitars are provided by Piotr Wróbel and Wojciech Zólty, sometimes shifting to a heavier tone and even offering a couple of very rare solos, while Ireneusz Wojnar's bass does a great job filling in the rhythm section in their place, certainly a more demanding and rewarding job than it would be for a more typical rock band in which guitars would drown the instrument out. Lukasz Gocal's drums set the various moods perfectly, but are otherwise a little devoid of inspiration.
1. Tylko najwieksi
2. Fantasmagorie
3. Slowa maja mnie
4. Kiedy wróce tu
5. Demo
6. Sama smietanka
7. Szerzej
8. Garb
9. Kiedy blizej z toba bede
10. Jeden czlowiek to jeden sens
11. Pracuje
12. Lan
13. Czy to juz
As noted, the album tends to fall into three distinct camps of slow reggae, bouncy ska-pop and "something slightly different," so it's most insightful to analyse the album from those three respective areas. The first, slower sound opens the album with the relaxing first track before shifting up a gear in the second, a jarring pattern executed repeatedly through the forty-five minute recording to keep listeners on their toes, and this first offering is a fair overview of what is to come (at least, in this particular style): the Polish vocals are fairly deep and thoughtful, the bass is prominent, and the trumpets are used sparingly to enhance and spice up the background. Track four, 'Kiedy wróce tu,' returns to this focus of the vocals carrying listeners through as the main instrument against a dub-style instrumental backdrop, but fails to do anything really new. This also disappointingly becomes the failing of 'Kiedy blizej z toba bede' and the penultimate 'Lan,' lacking in the energy of the more upbeat songs and only compensating for their dullness with some interesting sax and trumpet leads. The latter half of the album tends to be the less impressive in general, no matter what style is being attempted.
The happy-crappy ska-pop songs are among the most enjoyable, particularly in contrast to the often relaxing-but-nothing-else tedium of the slower pieces, and things are kicked off nicely with the title track, rightfully selected as the album's first single. The jovial "ba-ba-ba" trumpets will put some people off straight away, but the chorus is nice and catchy (I don't know what any of it means, but that doesn't matter), the sprightly, slightly higher vocals are pleasing on the ear, and there's a nice, loose instrumental section towards the end. The following track 'Slowa maja mnie' attempts a similar thing to less effect, but thankfully slows down a little to achieve a more meaningful tone, aided by the lower vocals and ominous, clunking bass. The vocal melody is catchy once again, and actually serves to remind me mainly of theme tunes to imported Easter European cartoon series of my youth (like 'Alfred J. Kwak,' 'Ovide' and others that I can't remember the names of). There's also a sax solo, which is always a nice touch.
This particular, upbeat style is arguably perfected with the sixth track 'Sama smietanka,' my favourite on the album, which unleashes a great punk energy right from the start that is absent from most of the other songs, and even plunges into a heavier, almost heavy metal chorus. Things are brightened up even further with unexpected solos towards the end for the bass, trumpet and even guitar. A proper guitar solo has to wait until 'Garb,' another interesting song that combines conflicting elements of mainstream accessibility (poppy vocals, obvious structure) with more distinctive, artistic touches (a weird water effect over the guitar, a weird intro handled by drums and vocals exclusively, and limited, forceful application of trumpet blasts as farty punctuation at the end of lines). As the album approaches its less exciting final section, where all the best ideas seem to have been used up, the only comparable offering is the frankly dull 'Pracuja,' which seems slotted in simply to break up the tedium with some upbeat energy. It doesn't really work, and the bizarre contrast between tangential instrumental sections and plodding, whispered verses are a little too distracting.
This leaves the songs that strive to be "something slightly different," predictably providing some of the album's most interesting and most disappointing tangents. The oddly titled 'Demo' is a prominent song for the trumpets, which work to bookend a main section of exhausting, almost disinterested spoken word vocals in the style of Mark E. Smith from The Fall, and which also overcomes the obstacle of overlong song duration present in some of the previous pieces. This vocal style re-emerges a little in the fun 'Szerzej,' though this far happier song is most notable for its trumpet-led chorus featuring the band shouting the title in unison. On a different wavelength entirely, 'Jeden czlowiek to jeden sens' is a semi-acoustic song that stands out nicely from the rest of the songs but doesn't do anything particularly noteworthy with itself, while the final, stylistically varied song has sections reminiscent of 80s TV show themes and Spanish chill-out music respectively, and as such avoids being my cup of tea.
Akurat's third album brings nothing new to the music world and takes permissible delight in its reproduction of the band's favourite sounds, most of which are combined skilfully and entertainingly. There's an obvious and disappointing drop in quality as the album enters its second half, and it loses points for failing to maintain interest throughout. This does at least mean that the earlier songs are mostly of a distinctly high quality, and that by being grouped together in this way, it's easy to listen to the best of the album without having to skip around all over the place; just hit the stop button after twenty minutes or so.
Summary: Akurat's third album (2006).
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