Erlend Oye is one half of the Kings of Convenience. When I think of what I like about the Kings of Convenience, I think: two guys singing and two guys playing acoustic guitar. As long as they keep to that formula, I'll probably always buy and enjoy their albums. So naturally Erlend Oye has made a solo record where his is the only voice, and there are no guitars; instead he has collaborated with ten electronica artists to create downbeat techno songs. Which of course we all saw coming, if not when the Kings of Convenience signed to Astralwerks, then at least when the remix album Versus came out.
Many have made the claim that electronica is the new folk music, or at least has that potential. If the acoustic guitar has worn out its welcome, then piles of electronic junk allow one guy with a voice to craft his own rich musical tapestry. In that spirit, one could draw many similarities to these songs composed by electronic artists to the folk guitar pieces composed by Oye and his fellow King Eirik Boe. However, I have to question whether I'd enjoy the Kings of Convenience as much if it was just one guy singing and one guy playing guitar. In this solo work from Oye, even though he teams with ten different artists, essentially that is the result: Oye sings, and the special guest creates some electronic melodies. There's no density or interplay to the music, just a pure, solitary melody, and there's absolutely no vocal harmony.
Thus, Oye's solo work will be of more interest to fans of the collaborators instead of fans of Oye, and it's not of much interest to me. Several songs work adequately well as smooth low-tempo electronic pop. Oye's great romantic lyrics are still present, like in "The Talk" (with Bjorn Torske), where a breakup is treated both with humor and tenderness. The song is more upbeat the rest, with its insistent piano rhythm, and is enjoyable without being disco. "A Sudden Rush" is pure disco, and fun to listen to for its unabashed disco-ness, with Moroder-esque frail structures and fake strings. The most colorful song is "Like Gold," Oye's collaboration with Schneider TM. Schneider TM does a great job of alternating between dense blip-textures and washes of warm glow, matching well with Oye's words. While songs like those are enjoyable, the majority of the album seems too one-dimensional, Oye's voice and the collaborators sounds failing to give the songs enough color and life to be interesting.
Perhaps if Oye had collaborated with several musicians at once instead of one at a time, this project would have been more successful. For example, he could have found a female backing vocalist instead of overdubbing his own voice, or he could have found a bass player to add more color and warmth to the cold electronic tones. Alternatively, he could have collaborated with these electronica artists in hand as well as word, trying to mix his acoustic guitar sounds with the keyboards blips and bleeps. Instead, this project is just straightforward, mediocre electronic pop which fails due to the clicheed failure of most electronic pop music: the tones aren't able to convey the warmth of the words.
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