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Album: Noonday Underground <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

On the Freedom Flotilla, SETANTA

Andy Gill
Friday 24 November 2006 01:00 GMT
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As the rave scene began to decline about a decade ago, its weary, frazzled participants started looking for a less exhausting form of music, one that wasn't as empty as chill-out or trance, but which retained the spaced-out edge of acid house. The result was trip-hop, which featured computer sample-scapes and funky grooves, and was usually fronted by some languid, mysterious lady, in imitation of Portishead's Beth Gibbons. That's the kind of feel that Noonday Underground producer Simon Dine and singer Daisy Martey have gone for on On the Freedom Flotilla. Martey's voice is well-suited to the task, with a soulful clarity that lends a solid, unifying presence to Dine's sometimes fragmentary sound-scapes, which draw ona diverse selection of samples ranging from the churning jazz flute and electric piano of "You Keep Holding On" to the spiky koto of "Goodbye To You". The results are intermittently enjoyable, if a touch dated, with "Silly Games" sounding like trip-hop folk music.

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Silly Games', 'The Love Is Gone', 'You Keep Holding On'

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