Mount Florida - Arrived Phoenix
(Matador)
Mount Florida are a couple of Scots with a lot of fancy recording equipment. One is a DJ, the other an
electronic musician. They mix up electronically generated beats and sounds with prerecorded music and
instruments (created especially for their use, not samples), stirring it all together into a dark gumbo. The
songs are pretty good, Mount Florida obviously have a knack for assemblage, but the record plays like a DJ
set. The only real relation one song has to the next is that they all happen to be on the same record.
For instance, consider this selection of songs. "Space Echoes," with its requisite alien bleeps and "lost in
space" vocal loop, rocks a kind of hard and cold post-dub vibe, à la newer Leftfield. Deep bass, shuffling
snares, choppy reverbed synths, eerie but wholly lacking in warmth. "Ultimo" picks up the bass and mixes
in something that sounds like a heavily processed wah-wah guitar, keeping the alien dub vibe, but with
more of an organic groove. "Jamaica Street," as you may have guessed, is more straight dub, but in ambient
form. Though there are common root elements in each of these three tracks, and they each can stand on their
own, they do not sound as if they have come from a common source. Eventually, the record covers such
ground as Analogue-style post rock ("Celebration"), upbeat dance music ("Yo La Kinski"), a couple of
Killing Joke-esque electro-rockers ("Postal" and "Bombast") and a thought piece ("Static Airwaves," a
Noam Chomsky reading, though not read by Chomsky himself, over maudlin strings).
This may very well be Mount Florida's intent, to not limit themselves. However, what they sacrifice is a
real identity. Most of the songs, though atmospherically pleasing, lack a defined personality. I bet this
record would sound great on a club PA, where you can feel the bass in your spine. It would probably even
work well as a soundtrack. But sitting at home, on the headphones, it sounds like a musical manifestation of
the "jack of all trades" axiom.
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