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CD Feature/ Larvae: "Dead Weight"

  Tobias

It’s not how much you can fit into the shaker or about what kind of dance routine you can come up with while juggling it. It’s about how well the different ingredients blend together to make for an entirely new and tasty coctail - and girls, don’t allow yourself to be fooled by Tom Cruise! In this respect, Larvae have found the perfect recipe for a stunning combination.

For sure, it is an important step forward for an act, which has taken on different shapes, but mainly come across as the one-man project of Matthew Jeanes. With “Dead Weight”, Larvae now return as a full-blown band, complete with guitars and vocalists, even though the latter are not part of the family, but only good friends and invited guests: Jessica Bailiff, whose dreamily erotic and feathery voice has already graced a couple of noteworthy solo releases marks one end of the spectrum, the powerful rapping by Shadowhuntaz’ Non the other – and in between are twelve superb pieces somwhere in a spirited, yet melancholic mood.  While “Empire”, the EP which preceeded this release, was still getting bootylicious on the dance floor, Jeanes and his mates Christopher Burnett and Bryan Meng were already working on far more refined and delicate sounds. Once the first track “Banjos & Brimstones” has slowed down from an ecstatic opening to a dubby grind, the album centers around deep bass lines, drums between dream and danger, as well as mysterious flares of melody and a world of simmering psychedelic particles. The emphasis has clearly been placed on atmospheres, allusions and implicit messages, rather than on clear-cut beats and extravert immediacy. Which means that “Dead Weight” may appear extremely nice, but a bit unspectacular when used as aural wallpaper. But on close inspection, it opens up huge spaces of associations and metaphors – you could spend hours listening to the masterfully layered intros, to crackling and hissing percussions melting with haunting harmonics and well-placed vocal samples. You don’t have to, though: From these drawn-back beginnings, the compositions meander through hip-hop, trippy broken beats and ruines of burnt-down rock, without ever fully arriving in the safe haven of a restrctively defined genre.

Which, of course, is the whole point of it – so better don’t call it “Cross Over”. Returning to coctails once again: “Dead Weight” is not even about blending any more, it’s about creating a melange, which still contains all the different flavourful stimuli, but tastes great in its own right as well. Cheers!

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Larvae
Homepage: Ad Noiseam Records