B DEEP

Feb
16
posted by Reggie Maurice

In 1916, the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky described dance music of the day as ‘the musical ideal…music that wishes to express nothing’. This is exactly what I love about B Deep’s album Island Hopping Through The Stratosphere. The creativity, emotions and production skills of B Deep have been focused into creating tunes with one primary goal: to get you grooving. Don’t look for anything deeper. Like jazz in 1916, this music was not intended to be enjoyed intellectually from the couch and ESPECIALLY not on laptop speakers. I cannot stress this enough. Laptops weren’t even invented in 1916.

The album starts with ‘Want To Bail’, and let’s all just admit openly that at certain times in life [afternoon engagement parties] we have related heavily to the concepts explored in this track. The calculated stumbling of soulful piano chords against a beat that the blogosphere in its current word-vacuum could only describe as ‘off-kilter’ brings to mind the whole J-Dilla thing, as well as early 60′s soul-infused Kanye West samples.

Most of the tracks are based on ultra-short loops and this gives them a hypnotic quality. Portions of the album could arguably be classified as ‘chill music’ but the intersection between ‘dance’ and ‘chill’ is a confusing place, often only a question of tempo and marketing. ‘Beyond Say’ is a perfect example of this. Plug in the subwoofer, and it is a bass-heaving groove explosion; decrease the volume a few dBs and cut out the low end and it becomes nothing more than a light sonic garnish.

Which I guess brings us to the ironic truth of the whole ‘instrumental beats’ scene; that it has created some of the most interesting dance music of recent years but at times tracks are so smoothly produced and non-offensive that they wouldn’t be out of place backing the Foxtel Menu. Foxtel is still a thing right?

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