Rainbow Arabia Boys and Diamonds
4/5
By: Theo Krekis
“Spin a globe, extend your finger, and let it fall where it may. Chances are—unless your digit landed in the ocean—your finger will rest on a swath of land that influences Rainbow Arabia.”
Having read the above nonsense before I had actually had a chance to listen to Rainbow Arabia’s debut record Boys and Diamonds, I expected their music would annoy me the same way as does a well travelled graduate who feels the necessity to talk about his/her travels to Goa and the inspirational things experienced. The thought of every place in the world influencing Rainbow Arabia’s music annoyed me. If I were to spin a globe and randomly place my finger on either Libya, Egypt or Tunisia, chances are my influences would either revolve around oil shortages or dictatorial megalomaniacs.
In the end though, I was pleasantly surprised by this well travelled duo. Boys and Diamonds is a record which offers a breezy slice of tropical melodies and tribal rhythms. It moves effortlessly through poppy opening numbers like the title track and ‘Without You’ with their bouncy 80’s synths, to tunes like ‘Papai’ with a slightly more psychedelic feel, filling the ears with peculiar synth noises and screeching vocals. ‘Jungle Bear’ and ‘Mechanical’ return to concerns of melody, unlike the closing ‘Sequenced’, which has a great progression at times not dissimilar to LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Get Innocuous’.
So despite my initial scepticism derived from an improbable assumption from someone who ran out of ideas on what to write for an article, the band which apparently incorporated influences from each of the the 190 odd countries of the world into their music earned a well deserved place onto my iPod. If a sugar coated Fever Ray singing over bouncy Eighties style synths and rustic drumming is something you’d like, chances are you’ll like this too.
Artists in this article: Rainbow Arabia
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