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Review: Jack Foley
PARISIAN-bon viveurs, Aloud, arrive like a club-driven cross
between Daft Punk and Air for their eponymous debut album, which
ought to appeal to the Ibiza section courtesy of its Ministry
of Sound roots.
That is to say, avoid at all costs unless the club scene is your
thing, because this is all about creating a post-Eighties party
atmosphere with the occasional chillout effort thrown in, presumably
for the morning after the night before.
It's all very electronic, occasionally ultra-kitsch, and contains
that unmistakeable French style.
But it also feels far too generic for its own good, and there
is a very real feeling that it's all been done before.
Aloud are comprised of Cyril Bodin's gravel-lined vocals and
Greg Louis' production values, which contain a certain slickness
about them.
But the attitude is best summed up in the PR surrounding their
recent single, Sex and Sun (which appears on the album
in two parts).
As Louis states: "It's all about the energy, the power and
the kitsch of our favourite decade. To quote the great George
Michael - it's natural, it's good, not everybody does it, but
everybody should.
"We've just got back from Miami... Now that place is the
definition of sex and sun. I’ve never seen so many big things
- big cars, big arms, big tits. We were quite disappointed when
we had to come back to France."
This attitude is best summed up in the club-stomping anthems
such as Bob O'Lean (which owes a lot in style to the
Daft Punk of One More Time), and Rocky XIII
(which is ripped right out of the Roger Sanchez handbook).
Chillout tracks come courtesy of the string-laden beats of Face
No More, which actually slows things down to better effect,
and Musique, with its rainfall sound effects and laidback
hammond organs.
But Bodin's vocals don't really stand up to much and lack the
smooth style of, say, Air or Daft Punk, for that matter.
In the final analysis, there's nothing worth shouting Aloud about
here.
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