One listens way beyond the beat, deep into the nuanced hues that makes this a really distinctive – customized – full-length debut.
[Release page] Any good custom car painter makes his colours “pop” by choosing the right kind of primer onto which he sprays layer upon layer of metallic undercoating. The final, transparent candy-apple coat is what gives it that eye-catching, added depth.
Chaim Avital is a Tel Aviv club veteran whose debut album is all about turning dance music into high-gloss, street legal pop, a task he achieves with panache. While hardly reinventing the genre, he does polish it to a deep, satisfying gleam. Straightforward, yummy beats and thick bass pulsate under layers of melodic synthesizer and the requisite sampled and looped voices. House music is by definition and choice intellectually disengaging (lyrics are decorative snippets, generally declaring “I ain’t gonna” or “I’m gonna” or “I need” or “I don’t need” something, usually “you”), the better to allow the dancer to listen to his or her feet. For his first take-home effort, however, Avital buffs each nook and cranny of his music to a streamlined sheen, making Alive music your mind can get lost in.
One listens way beyond the beat, deep into the nuanced hues that makes this a really distinctive – customized – full-length debut. The piano trills of “Everything” smartly offset the atonal, repetitive keyboard chord like a spray of flowers in the middle of a well-tended but otherwise featureless lawn. The bouncing synths and angelic expulsions of breath on “Naturalness” are only slightly less infectious than “Popsky,” a full-throttle ride in the summer sunshine.
Sometimes people mistake “surface” for “superficiality” when it may very well be a reflection of what lies deeper within. Alive is both sleek and revels in close scrutiny.
Alive is available on BPitch Control.
[itunes id=”415308567″]
