Agoria - The Green Armchair (Pias)
3/5
By: Charlie Potter
One of the most notable things about 'The Green Armchair' is the range of styles it attempts. However, a friend of mine criticised it saying it sounds like they're desperately trying too hard at everything they do, but the real question for me is what their motivation is for going about things this way. If a band were trying to make the best music they could possibly make then I would hope that they would indeed try everything. But the worry my friend had was that they were doing it for some shallow success, and not for any artistic reason.
It's hard to say whether this is the case or not. There are certainly a lot of tried and tested methods rolled out, for example 'Million Miles' (with vocals provided by Neneh Cherry) sounds more like Massive Attack than Massive Attack currently do. The album then continues to explore amongst other things all the various styles of Massive Attack interlaced with the further reaches of house music.
The material that makes this album interesting is what's left over after all that's been done. There's a bizarre 1980's Depeche Mode or David Bowie feel to a lot of it, though without using those two hardly accurate comparisons it remains very hard to place this sound. This problem is itself a big part of what makes the sound so exciting. You could describe it as dark but only in the way that people describe Depeche Mode as dark, not in the Khanate sense of the word with lots of echo and creepy synth sounds, drones, glows, hums and the like.
One thing that gets in the way of being able to class this as amazing is that there's rarely any real pay off in the songs. These are tunes that don't really go anywhere, and as such the album ends up being quite the investment of time and concentration - something I have a lot of respect for - but you end up feeling that there just isn't enough music on this album. A lot of the sounds present go a long way to showing that Agoria care a great deal about the overall aesthetic, but the promise of the release of the tension is missing.
Largely, 'The Green Armchair' succeeds in the difficult task of exploring a range of styles without breaking its overall sense of cohesion, but all it takes is the odd track such as 'Lips On Fire' to throw things off course. It's a song which feels like it's been written for the singer more than the band, and as such sits a little uncomfortably on the album.
If you investigate, you'll find there's a lot of this music emerging and I think it really is moving in a good direction. Whilst I really wanted this to be the one for which I could say they've pulled it off there's just something a little too awkward about it. To progress, bands like Agoria need to drop their 'producer' mentality, but never lose that desire to explore sound.
Artists in this article: Agoria
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