Saturday, April 2, 2011
Digital Soundclash: Album review: Chicane - Far From The Maddening .
Released in 1997, Far From The Maddening Crowds (or FFTMC from now on) is a regular tour-de-force of chilled late '90s electronica. The album borrows elements of trance, ambient and downtempo and melds them seamlessly together into one extra-lush whole. The tunes themselves range from extremely chilled out downtempo tracks that almost verge on the ambient, such as the dreamlike 'Already There', to several more upbeat dance-y numbers like 'Red Skies'. In one of the biggest crimes in the story of pop music, this album was out-of-print and unavailable to purchase for an excruciating five year period due to some bullshit legal wranglings and licensing issues. The result of all this was that still-new copies of the album were at one time exchanging hands online for as often as 70 a pop. Thankfully, FFTMC was eventually given the re-release it so rightfully deserved in 2007, complete with the accession of one rather pointless bonus track - a brand new remix of club classic 'Offshore' (which already appeared in two separate mixes on the original pressing).
As for the music, it's a gross waste of time trying to pick standout tracks as the full album is one constant flow of standouts. Each line is a beautifully crafted work of charm in its own right, and the fact that Bracegirdle managed to make such a consistently fantastic album is one that still boggles my mind even today. A big plenty of the biggest trance hits of the late '90s were one-offs by producers who, more frequently than not, failed to make the dizzy heights of their respective "anthems" again. The matter about FFTMC is that it feels like an entire album of absolute grade-A classic tunes, except that it all somehow came from the same godlike source.
There's a wonderful ebb and run to this album as a unit which goes still farther to enhancing the climate it conjures up. Things go off slowly with the foremost two tracks 'Early' and 'Already There', the latter of which takes advantage to some evocative acoustic guitar work to raise its sun-drenched Mediterranean ambiance. FFTMC then begins to picking up a short pace with the aforementioned club favourite 'Offshore', whose acoustic hook and simple piano melodies are instantly recognizable to trance fans worldwide. While 'Offshore' is surely more dance-oriented than the past two tracks, that chilled-out Balearic vibe is maintained perfectly through the changing tempos. The balance of the album then rides gently through peaks and troughs of upbeat dance and relaxing downtempo tracks (such as the classic 'Sunstroke'), before reaching a climax with 'Offshore '97' - a reworking of the original cover with an energetic female vocal line courtesy of Power Circle's 'A Little Love, A Little Life' - and last with the sweeping come-down of 'The Drive Home'.
I really cannot emphasize enough but how utterly brilliant Chicane's debut full-length is. FFTMC is utterly drenched in the ambiance of summer and chilled trips to Ibiza - a record that perfectly represents the musical era in which is was created.It seems as though Chicane was in a truly inspired place when he put thiscollection together and, let's face it, these are moments of brilliancethat he's just never been capable to make since. I doubt he always will, but I surely can't fault him for that; this album is only too good.
I don't wish to have the term "perfect album" around too much (although I see that I've suggested as much twice already on this blog - in my defence they were two of my all-time favourite albums), but on rare occasions you may just stumble upon something that's worthy of this most coveted
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