Album Review

Metronomy – The Bay

• 29th Jul 2011

Metronomy are edging their way out of their underground hipster favourite status as critical acclaim mounts, airplay falls in their favour and racking up a Mercury Music nomination for The English Riviera.

And thus, the understated, and magically groove fuelled single, The Bay, has been infiltrating airwaves and creeping up on unsuspecting ears.

It doesn’t reach out and grab you, but you do somehow find yourself falling into the toe-tapping and head-nodding beat as it gently cruises on by you.

The Bay is at the same times darkness and light, pulsing from the stereo like a slightly twisted take on Visage’s Fade To Grey, harbouring the same synthesised menace whilst remaining a pleasurable listen throughout, it could quite easily have been plucked straight from the eighties, yet still sounds vitally now beyond it’s throwback tendencies.

And with some well respected names on duty for the remix package (Erol Alkan, The 2 Bears and Stopmakingme), I thought I may be in for a real treat of beats, but sadly they all delivered mostly uninspired takes  that all fail to shine any brighter than the original and don’t mess with the formula of the source material to a great extent, almost as if they each are apologetic in their treatments of it.

In particular is the Erol Alkan Extended Rework, which does as it says on the tin and completely fails to remix the track at all, instead taking the original and simply making it about twice as long as it used to be.

It seems as if the original could not be improved upon.