Whether or not its because I can’t sit back, close my eyes, and imagine myself on a beach over looking the Pacific Ocean or whether because at a whopping 90 minutes in length this 2-CD release from the New Zealand outfit suffers the kind of lag more commonly associated with international flights and baggage retrieval systems, I can’t quite connect with the album’s cross-boundary, pan-European, trans-international approach to genre-hopping.
Whilst tracks like ‘Earth’ whilst vibrate with all manner of giddy abandon and noirish trippy signatures, they seem almost schizophrenic. It’s part soul, part funk, part hip, part hop. And yes, variety might be the spice of life, but it’s also the curse of having too many irons in the fire, too many distractions and too many records. That said, instrumental tracks like ‘Equinox’ achieve more in two-and-a-half minutes of purring, fluid hypno-jazz than Norah Jones could achieve in a lifetime.
Based in Christchurch (New Zealand, not Dorset), the album achieved platinum sale status within three weeks of its national release.
Pleasing but not compulsive.