[!K7]
Matt Edwards, better known as Radio Slave, is one half of hypnotic disco duo Quiet Village with DJ Joel Martin. Edwards has been incredibly prolific as a producer, remixer and label owner, and Quiet Village is where he’s gone to hang his more relaxed hat. After three singles and a slew of remixes, the pair has released Silent Movie, their debut album for !K7. Listening to it, I get the impression that when Edwards hangs out with crate-hound Martin the two “select” the soundtrack to their lives. Tellingly, the album has the bombast of an Italian soundtrack artist melding together very fundamental classic rock themes with starlit disco strings and soulful vocals. In fact, most of the tracks are largely built upon samples tweezed and looped in the modern edit-fashion which has become quite popular over the last few years.
These days everything has a soundtrack. The newfound portability of music has allowed music lovers to score every twist and turn in the storyline of their life — every received phone call, munchie run and visit to Myspace. Most of us aren’t musicians, so we’re not making new music so much as adapting that of others’, leaving the painstakingly-selected messengers of our musical emotions to tell the story. That’s fine. But when it’s in album form, as it is on Silent Movie, the personal soundtrack is easy on the ears and also somewhat reheated. The duo nicely strung together and blended some excellent material but didn’t do much else to it. Other artists like the Avalanches were more ornate in their patchwork of samples, whereas Zero 7 covered a similar musical territory but wrote new parts.
A lot people aren’t going to care. “Circus of Horror” has an irresistible swagger, in the plunging strut of its rock bass line, in the cooing vocal/string interplay and dabs of soundtrack noises; it just barely jumps the hurdle of cheese into triumphant territory. “Free Rider” seesaws between a dusky shootout at sundown and furious acoustic strums approximating CSNY/Nick Drake. One of the most charming sequences on the album is from “Too High to Move,” in all its heavy-lidded horizontal disco poise, to the earnest soul assurances and slicing strings of “Pacific Rhythm” — or rather, their edit of Sister Sledge’s song “You’re A Friend to Me.” It keeps the blood racing when it might otherwise run to your head. Kudos also for working in the painkiller-glazed sound QV fans crave on “Utopia” and “Can’t Be Beat.”
So when evaluating this album, you have to decide what you’re after: a personalized soundtrack that’s catchy and familiar or an original thought from Matt Edwards and Joel Martin. I wish there was more of the latter. Silent Movie is not an album I would ask to switch off nor an album I would ask to put on. We all have our own soundtracks, and much of Quiet Village’s debut is not on mine.
