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Album Review
by SashaS
3-11-2001
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| Supreme leisure |
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Supreme Beings Of Leisure: 'Supreme Beings Of Leisure'
(Palm Pictures)
Supreme Beings Of Leisure tonal mixture is a killer
There are hundreds of albums released every week and many goodies escape scrutiny due to the heavy hype and all the aggressive advertising going on. (Why does Radio 1 join in is beyond logic? Are pluggers that persuasive!?) For instance, the Supreme Beings of Leisure’s eponymous debut is a deeply chilling and interesting debut but it’s generally been overlooked.
What this lot have generated is an incredible musical range to take you into new regions of sound and experience. It “owes its sensual and transcendental nature to lavish electronic effects as it does simple human emotions. Bringing together the band’s musical influences as disparate as Massive Attack, Björk, Pink Floyd, Ravi Shankar, Mozart, ABC, and Sly and the Family Stone”, reads the official press release. (A bit pretentious but it’s also true, trust me – I’m a journo!)
The good thing is that, despite all these influences, this music is actually not derivative. It builds from this basis but it continues to elevate beyond frontiers of the explored territory. There is something sci-fi about it all, not only due to the titles such as ‘Last Girl On Earth’, ‘Strangelove Addiction’, ‘Nothing Like Tomorrow’… But, it is not alienating, it is ear-pleasing and yet gets to your body and mind. Not an album that is going to re-write musical reality but certainly on par with the more lauded releases, such as So Solid Crew’s album, for instance.
Supreme Beings of Leisure grew out of Oversoul 7, Ramin Sakurai, Kiran Shahani and Rick Torres’s outfit that was working on rap demos when they got inspired and asked solo artist Geri Soriano-Lightwood, busy cutting her own album, to get on a track. These new recordings mixed sounds of their origins – Dominican Republic, Iran, Japan, Puerto Rico, Ireland – into something rather special and few of their songs found places on different compilations.
One of their songs, ‘Truth From Fiction’, was used in an Italian commercial for Lancia Lybre, starring Harrison Ford, which is ironic because this album took a long time to cross the Atlantic. It is music that is seductive, sexy, glamorous, playful, soulful and haunting. Globally inspired songs from American perspective to enrich spirits and tire muscles.
Do yourself a favour and discover it.
8/10
SashaS
3-11-2001
Supreme Beings of Leisure’s album ‘Supreme Beings of Leisure’ is out now of Palm Pictures
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