Some albums are just inherently difficult to write about and it is fair to say that Hyde and Beast’s ‘Slow Down’ collapses head first into this particular category. In fact, to underline the point, the extent of my notes for it is one singular, hastily scrawled, sentence imploring: “stop crashing my f**king iTunes!!!!”
Yes it appears that the aptly-titled album is so uninteresting that a computer programme which has shown absolutely no consideration for taste in the past (you should hear some of the crap that I choose to listen to at times) on hearing the opening bars of the album has raised the white flag, committed hari kari and shut itself down in protest on three seperate occasions.
Am I being unfair? Well, more than likely. I have developed a bit of a repuation for it and I’m not going to sit here and proclaim my opinions definitive. The simple fact is that the music on offer from the North East two-piece is just not to my liking.
The album, a side-project combining Futureheads drummer Dave Hyde and former Golden Virgins drummer Neil Bassett, just seems to mistake reverence for the music of past eras (specifically the 60s and 70s) for dynamism. Too many of the tracks do nothing to differentiate themselves and as such it becomes impossible to find a stand-out amongst them. Not only that, but as a result the effort seems far longer than its 31 minutes.
Not to my taste.
(Released through Tail Feather Records and OUT NOW)
(5/10)
Kenneth John Porteous
