aaamusic | On 22, Oct 2012

There’s a lot of crap music out there, a lot of it neglecting the unending plethora of emotive power that can be drawn from a wider, more traditional, and more refined selection of genres and styles. Mark Ronson showed us that not only can this be invigorating, inventive, and successful, but also charged with the elusive but prideful roar of British identity. Taking a leaf from his book, the producer duo of Pat Dooner and Carl Conway-Davis bring together a host of talented musicians and vocalists to form The Broken Orchestra, whose debut album Shifui is the next in a line of testaments to the power of vintage feel and composition.
The haunting vintage hiss and subtle cascading phase of ‘Intro’ unfolds slowly and beautifully; a perfect underplayed opening that ends as soon as it begins, though you feel you could listen forever. The fusion of the organic instrumentalism and barely-there vintage fuzz sets a constant for the duration of the experience, crafting an original aesthetic of fragility throughout that does a fantastic job of accentuating the already charming persona of the album.
And the second track ‘Over and Over’ reveals itself; slow, lazing, perpetually a waking-moment, it houses a gentle yet powerful progression that solidly punches through the slight sheets of distorted phase. Of course, the main attraction here is the fantastic Sunday-morning vocals supplied by Natalie Gardiner. From here, the album’s focus on the power of vocals is made clear. With this in mind, raising the game, the street meets the stratosphere in ‘Reach the Stars’, with urban lyricisms fast-firing from emcee Lady Paradox through jazzy midnight lacings, evoking the metropolitan, yet soulful personas of Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse, capturing a quintessentially British zeitgeist in a manner quite unlike anything else on the record.
The mournful keys of ‘Take Back the Day’ echo against sparse yet powerful drums and curtains of gently rousing strings, the voice of Moby’s lead singer Inyang Bassey rising with stirring dynamism until it and the chorus of violins are almost indistinguishable. The production and performance here, and everywhere else, is consistently brilliant; always subtly beautiful, never overblown, taut yet loose, layered but minimalist, full yet tantalisingly wanting. I really feel the album is difficult to poke holes in – not that I’m such a cynic that I would want to – it carries a musical concept throughout, but no track seems to be a sacrifice to this ideal; all the tracks, while obviously inescapably similar, are powerful and touching in their own way, and a listening afforded to any in isolation still manages to tug at the heartstrings.
Thanks to Lauren Jade, the fifth track ‘In the Same Way’ somehow manages to reach new heights of soulfulness; her bassy, concave warble intermingling with placid bass and haunting off-harmony flute melodies arouse smoky shades of Amy Winehouse and Adele, as the vocal work proves to be as orchestral as the instrumental backing. ‘Closer’ spices the pace of the album with funky bass and sprightly drums, charged with the duet of Anna Stott’s vocals and the combination of melodious and emotive guitar and smooth saxophone work that drifts, rises, falls. Cavernous and brooding, ‘Fine Balance’ shimmers with beautifully sparkling, yet melancholy acoustic guitar fingerpicking, before the subtle arpeggios are inventively bastardized into pulsing synthy stuttering bass rhythms, with the track erupting sleepily into silky jazz through the sometimes powerful, sometimes quavering vocals of the vocalist Belle.
In the album’s closing phase, we are treated to ‘Lost and Found,’ Inyang Bassey’s reprise on the album in spectacular form, morose dejection rising to never-ending wails against downbeat jangling guitars, hearkening to Winehouse and Ronson’s work ‘Back to Black’, before suddenly hitting silence like a brick wall. Powerful stuff. But Anna Stott’s reprise on the album refuses to be upstaged. ‘To a Place’ is an inspiring, poignant piece, as Stott’s vocals rise and fall from a whisper to piercing crescendos, on a blanket of white choral oooohs.
And finally we arrive at the Duo’s very personal effort, without the aid of their magnificent entourage of vocalists; the titular track ‘Shibui’. What we get is a brilliantly crafted textural piece; twanging, droning guitars overcome by moaning celtic strings and dissonant key plinks, and barely noticeable drum patter. It’s hard to perceive the work as a sum of parts – it feels like a single voice, a fitting end to an album that extols the power of vocal and musical unity.
The album approaches the artform of music as a collation of feelings and ideas, which, while sounding pretentious, doesn’t have an ounce of pretense to it; each track is a personal episode with its own character, all contributing to the whole, an experience that hovers in the twilight between sleeping and waking that exudes a constant naturalistic, organic feel. I strongly believe that over the last 10 years, maybe more, a real longing for this music has cultivated itself, particularly within the British consciousness; there is a corner of British musical identity that is all too often vacant – these guys may just be the ones to fill it.

★★★★★

Matt Fellows