Schema is a collaboration between Seattle's noise-gods, Hovercraft, and Mary
Hansen of England's French disco/lounge/pop kings, Stereolab. Much like
Hash Jar Tempo, this collaboration sounds much like the band who fills the
most spots in the collaboration, which in this case is Hovercraft. Unlike
Hash Jar Tempo, the presence of the collaborator (Mary Hansen) makes a
monumental difference when she sticks her head out from beneath the chaos of
Campbell 2000's noise guitar dominance.
Hovercraft deliver a batch of songs very similar to their Experiment Below
album, and Mary adds a bit here and there (there are of course some
ba-ba-bas thrown in and a good amount keyboard). However, she keeps her
parts from moving to the bouncy and upbeat style of Stereolab and instead
layers her vocals into harmonies and lets her keyboard drone out.
The addition of Mary's vocals doesn't really work for me because they seem
to be out of place. They are very human sounding, while Hovercraft sounds
entirely otherworldly. However, the keyboards are nice and serve as a good
anchor when the very thin thread holding the song together starts breaking.
So while this is an interesting pairing, and it's fun to hear, the parts I
enjoy the most are the parts that sound no different from Hovercraft's
other material.
Since the songs are similar to Experiment Below, I would rarely
(if ever) choose to listen to Schema over Hovercraft's albums.
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