The Severed Cortex

Link: http://www.amazon.com/11i-Supreme-Beings-Leisure/dp/B000WPNKJ6/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1215134630&sr=8-1

I know very few people are going to care for this kind of stuff, but sometimes I can't get enough of this trip hop. Although, I'd really tend to call this more downbeat chill than trip hop. Then again, what the fuck do I know about the electronica genre and how it is subdivided. All I really care about is does it work for coding ... or writing. Definitely yes on the first one. There's a little too much vocals on this to make it work out perfect for writing, but I'm not going to count that against it. The vocals are plenty fine.

I know virtually nothing about Supreme Beings of Leisure other than the name connotes an entity highly dedicated to chilling out. You have to admit it is a kick ass name and one that is highly descriptive of the type of music they play. If you see an umlaut on a band name you know immediately it's a heavy metal band. If you see a band called The Neil Diamond Revue, you know for sure their audience is not primarily made up of surf punks. Primarily of course. I assume a few surf punks secretly like Neil Diamond. (note to self: ... Neil Diamond done surf punk style. I think I see a Cracklin' Rosie arrangement in my future ... ) That doesn't really help me know more about the band though. For some reason electronica artists don't really inspire me to look up more information on them. It's probably because most electronica artists are guys in their basement. About the only one that I've consistently liked over the years is Amon Tobin and even I don't know a ton about him other than his music is totally smoking.

If you don't like chill or downbeat or the generic trip-hop, you won't like SBOL at all because that's exactly what it is. There are far more vocals than on most trip-hop releases, including more than the one that started it all, Portishead's Dummy. To me, that sort of moves it out of the trip-hop genre a little, especially when the song structures tend to take on more of the traditional pop song. That's good and bad. Good because one of my beefs with electronica is that it can drone on forever for eighteen minutes of the same song. Bad, because electronica should be a continious groove and since these are more like pop songs they just get started with the groove when they are over and moving to the next one. Pop songs tend to be of the four minute or less variety and for the most part all the songs on this SBOL release come in around that mark. I think for some reason that makes this music much more accessible than your typical electronica would. The track Everywhere kind of sums up that whole pop song accessibility thing.
It doesn't hurt that the vocals are fantastic. It doesn't hurt that the grooves are fantastic either. And it definitely doesn't hurt that the production values are incredible. That's sort of the hook with this type of music. By nature it is highly over produced. A lot of those production tricks you'd never be able to duplicate in a live setting, but then again, going out to see bands in this realm is not high on my list. I saw Crystal Method a couple of years ago and while the music was awesome and the light show was even better, it still boils down to it's a couple of DJ's pressing buttons on their laptops and samplers. It's not the most exciting thing in the world to watch.

There aren't any really stellar tunes on this release, but there are a lot of solid songs. The whole back half of the album is nothing but solid, but not spectacular, songs. The front half has a couple of standout gems, most notably the lead track This Light. It's definitely the definition of trip-hop and it sets a nice tone for the rest of the CD. Mirror is probably the best tune on the album, but I also like the track Swallow. If you're looking for something cool, and stylized, and downbeat while you drive or clean house or whatever, this is the thing for you to get.