| Boomkat
Japanese label Flau have lured Andrew Hargreaves and Craig Tattersall
away from their traditional home on Moteer for a brand new album of
unclassifiable electronic and acoustic song fragments. The jokey song
titles almost seem like a distraction, as if The Boats are trying to
distance themselves from how honestly sentimental and unwaveringly lovely
their music is. Of course, titles like 'Get Folk Outta My Face' really
doesn't reflect the tone of the music's achingly beautiful content,
and certainly by the time you arrive at the chiming glockenspiel tones
and shuffling scratchy beats of 'It's Not A Folk, It's A Knife', the
punning stretches some way beyond the absurd, and the veil of humour
can't obscure the intricately crafted warmth of these compositions.
While genre classifications have never applied to The Boats' melodious
electronic discharges, there are certain points of Faulty Toned Radio
where you can hear the beats bulking up, and making strides towards
the dancefloor (albeit a very quiet dancefloor) on 'Cars, Bikes, Boats,
Babes', which combines the plaintive, unassuming electronic hum that
underpins so much of the duo's work and imposes a folksy 4/4 micro-house
template. It's a gorgeously direct piece of music from a band who've
previously made their very own language out of low-key, headphone-friendly
electronics. That's not the only example of this either:
counterbalancing the bitcrushed piano outings like 'This Is For You
To Read' you'll encounter playful acid-influenced basslines on 'Hemihorn'
and tuneful, uptempo music on 'As For Substance'. In any case, all these
pieces remain staunchly within The Boats' distinctive idiom, but their
vocabulary just got that little bit broader. Gorgeous music - Highly
recommended.
Cyclic Defrost
Curators of all things homespun, in Faulty Toned Radio The Boats
present their most versatile effort yet, augmenting their drinking songs
and sea shanties with digital processing techniques. The plain melodic
speaking continues; the same uncomplicated delight in the sound of,
say, stones rubbing together still tinkers about; now there are simply
some more ambiguous tonalities produced by sound seeping down through
layers of digital processing.
It’s a boat thus peopled with keening melodic lines that parry and thrust
through thick yet fragile layers of electronic synthesis; enthusiastic
nursery-rhythms that are full of gentle jolts from rhythmic hiccups;
and splashes of accordion that merge with rich and deep electronic textures
to paint a blurry seascape.
At first, the move seems an outright success: the interactions are sharp
and piquant, the colors varied and engaging. Midway through, however,
the group ceases to shuffle the deck and appears paralyzed, as though
they’ve seen their reflection in the mirror and are no longer able to
envision anything else. Faulty Toned Radio adds a fresh layer of significance
to the groups sound; now they need assume an attitude or series of questioning
orientations to truly flesh it out.
Textura
The Boats dock in Flau's Japanese harbour for the group's sixth
outing Faulty Toned Radio. As they've done in the past, ship captains
Andrew Hargreaves and Craig Tattersall seem intent on undercutting the
loveliness of their laptop folk music by giving the songs wince-inducing
(and grammatically incorrect) titles like “Get Folk Outta My Face” and
“Its Not A Folk Its A Knife” so you're generally advised to ignore the
titles and simply press “Play.” In many respects, The Boats' signature
style remains—gentle, static-drenched electro-acoustic melodies and
scratchy beats heard via broken old radios—but there's a more pronounced
rhythm dimension this time around and the band's lullabies are sonically
denser and more animated and tightly structured than in the past. In
“The Melody Mosquito,” faint tinkles and glockenspiel tones brighten
the placid keyboard melodies while beats lightly skip through puddles
of static. The pop and pitter-patter of beats also brings propulsion
to the tranquility of “Harry, Stop It Please” and an insistent 4/4 kick
drum—a rare thing indeed for The Boats—is even heard pulsating through
“As For Substance.” A subtly funky groove underpins blurry piano chords
and electronic accents in “This Is For You To Read” while, most jarringly,
“Bikes Cars Boats Babes” and “The Blotch Is Crossed” actually place
The Boats firmly on the dance floor by underpinning the songs' willowy
electronic layers with clubby micro-house grooves (traces of acid—acid!—even
seep into the closer “Hemihorn”). They say travel's good for the soul;
certainly the trip away from home pays off for Hargreaves and Tattersall
as Faulty Toned Radio finds them retaining the essence of The Boats'
established sound while smartly extending it into new territory.
Autres Directions
Pour leur (déjà) ?-ème disque depuis 2004, les excellents anglais
The Boats s’acoquinent avec le label japonais Flau (Cokiyu, Part Timer...)
pour délivrer l’album Faulty Toned Radio : en quittant leur propre label
Moteer, ils offrent peut-être leur oeuvre la plus aboutie.
Quel auditeur de The Boats ne s’est pas laissé totalement envahir par
ces atmosphères évanescentes, toiles électroniques suspendues parcourues
par quelques instruments acoustiques et des voix ? Ici, cet état sera
sublimé : l’introductif Get The Folk Outta My Face, relativement mélodique,
suivi de It’s Not A Folk It’s A Knife, au rythme assuré et à la mélopée
pop, facilitera grandement le tout. Pour autant, Faulty Toned Radio
n’oublie pas les scenettes instrumentales fantômatiques caractéristiques
de The Boats (The Melody Mosquito, This Is For You To Read), mais ces
dernières, fortement évocatrices, n’oublient pas de se parer d’une mélodie
ou d’une histoire. Le groupe s’autorise enfin de petites incursions
microhouse (Harry, Stop It Please, As For Subsitance) du plus bel effet,
et un final plus électronique (The Blotch Is Crossed, Hemihorn). Une
nouvelle pierre de taille dans une discographie foisonnante.
EtherREAL
Après l’ultra-limité Our Small Ideas paru en début d’année,
The Boats nous livrent leur premier véritable album depuis près de deux
ans. Ayant rejoint, par l’entremise d’aus, le label japonais Flau, les
Anglais y trouvent une structure parfaitement adaptée à leur electronica
douce et fragile, à laquelle on a parfois fait le reproche de se satisfaire
un peu trop de son côté mignonnet.
La quasi-absence de chant (seul Chris Stewart intervient - a minima
- sur un unique morceau) sur ce nouveau long-format laisse, à cet égard,
espérer un léger renouvellement du propos du duo qui, cette fois-ci,
a choisi de rendre hommage aux vieux transistors (d’où le nom du disque
et l’illustration de pochette). Cependant, hormis ce canevas majoritairement
instrumental, la musique des Britanniques ne diffère nullement de ce
qu’ils ont pu nous proposer jusqu’à présent : suite de vignettes (les
quatre minutes ne sont que rarement dépassées) dans lesquelles apports
électroniques délicats et boucles mélodiques organiques se mêlent, discrétion
d’un ensemble jouant délibérément profil bas et caractère évocateur
suffisamment présent pour fonctionner, sans pour autant verser dans
la facilité illustratrice.
En cherchant bien, on repèrera néanmoins (surtout dans la seconde partie
du disque d’ailleurs) quelques rythmiques un peu plus marquées que par
le passé (This Is For You To Read et l’entraînant Cars, Bikes, Boats,
Babes), une interaction réussie entre pulsations synthétiques et mélodica
(The Boats Can’t Save You Now), des sonorités électronique vintage (Hemihorn)
ou une construction musicale torturée (Please Correct Me). Au final
donc, de menues évolutions et un sentiment assez proche de celui ressenti
au sortir d’Our Small Ideas : rien de bien nouveau ni qui mérite nécessairement
l’acquisition d’un tel album, mais la confirmation d’un savoir-faire
indéniable.
Vital Weekly
Behind The Boats are Andrew Hargreaves (also known as Beppu)
and Craig Tattersall (The Remote Viewer), who had albums on Moteer before.
I think I may have heard some Remote Viewer before, but surely don't
remember it very well, and surely, again, I don't think I heard The
Boats before properly. Somehow it sounds Japanese, like releases on
Spekk or Noble. The rhythm is ticked away pleasantly, organ sounds are
digitally processed and humming along, the bass is present and in sync.
Modern living room dance music. Small melodies arise and go away. It
sounds strangely acoustic and digital. All is fair and pleasant, but
I couldn't help noticing that the strong similarity between the various
pieces, which made the whole CD sound a bit too similar. One keep waiting
for that really odd track which stands out, that is really different,
but, spoiler here, it doesn't happen. Then it seems that eleven tracks,
which are kind of interchangeable is a bit too much, even when this
has a modest LP length. Half of it would have made perfect sense too.
U-Cover
Distinctive melodies exclusive to them and the characteristic
attention to detail, though they've discovered new lands within the
electronic landscape by utilising both acoustic and digital navigation
techniques and treating them to their unique shaping.
The Music Lobby
The Boats have certainly been busy this year. After releasing
an absolute gem of a debut (2004's Songs By the Sea), they in my opinion
went down a notch over the next couple of years with two good, if inconsistent
albums ("Jonathan And Rob" off We Made It For You is still
a favorite of mine), and a nice split EP with Pendle Coven. But in 2008,
they've gone prolific, this being one of three releases so far this
year. Luckily, the quality of this album doesn't suffer from the work
ethic. I've always sensed that The Boats witty naming conventions for
their songs tried to disguise how emotional and serious the actual content
of the songs is. But the emotion of the songs is something The Boats
don't need to apologize for; the whole of Faulty Toned Radio is achingly
beautiful, subtle but dramatic when it needs to be, reserved and chill
when it makes sense. If The Boats aren't taking their music seriously,
the content of this album doesn't speak to that. What's interesting
about this album is a subtle dancefloor influence, which, while making
the Pendle Coven partnership seem more reasonable, is something entirely
new to The Boats sound. I don't quite understand how they're able to
make a 4/4 fit in so well with what has always been a very organic,
almost homemade sound, but it works, and it's quite cool. This is by
no means a dance record or anything, but this influence certainly adds
a bit of range to The Boats' sound, and has certainly helped them get
back to making albums of the quality Songs By the Sea suggested.
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