Fontanelle - Style Drift
(Kranky)
The use of the term "muscular, freaky groove" in Kranky's description of this disc should have been warning enough. Style Drift begins innocently enough, with shimmers of sound that echo softly and do little to suggest what's soon to follow. Very quickly, however, the true nature of the track, "Interstices," and the album as a whole, become evident. Fontanelle whip out the analog synths, guitars, drums, and all the faux funk that they can muster to create what, at best, might be a hackneyed attempt at some sort of futuristic blaxploitation porn soundtrack. There are moments at which Style Drift could be mistaken for the work of a contemporary IDM outfit, one perhaps with a snappy sense of the fashionably funky, but even these moments are few an far between, and Fontanelle quickly return to the glossy fusion rock that seems to be their bread and butter. Their ever-so-smooth stylings, smarmy and bland, are so polished there's not one jagged edge to be found on the whole album. There's barely a single moment in which the music veers from its course and gains any character beyond its tacky funk vibe, which, it must be said, is presented with no sense of irony or cheap retro thrills. Though the music does incorporate computer effects and noises that would never be found on anything created in the original age of fusion's beginnings, there's nothing on Style Drift that indicates a noticeable or significant step forward from the fusion idiom, and Fontanelle have squandered the chance they had to do something more interesting than garnish the groove with some of the squishy sounds utlized by Autechre and the like. Style Drift might be more forgivable if there was a little more brawn in it, if the music Fontanelle made wasn't so unarguably soft, perhaps even limp. I've heard music this smooth and groovy made with a little muscle (some of the more recent Zombi compositions come to mind), but Fontanelle's work on Style Drift does little to imbue the album with any punch whatsoever.
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