The Beat Surrender

Although it’s not uncommon these days with the various advances in technology and the fact that people are less suspicious of hooking up with people through social networking sites, but bands like Smile Down Upon Us still seem amazing to me.

You see Keiron Phelan and David Sheppard (who have at least worked together before) have never met Japanese artist Moom Looo who provides the vocals throughout this enchanting album, with everything being done via the internet, having found each other through the all embracing MySpace site.

They did it by sending ideas backwards and forwards to each other with Phelan and Sheppard putting together all kinds of instrumentation, while on the other side of the world Looo was adding the electronic elements that you hear throught the album and the many field sounds that you hear on the tracks.

Working like this shouldn’t be fruitful really, you always imagine with music that half the battle is getting the chemistry in the room right between the individuals concerned and then bouncing off each other, it seems though that these three are tearing up that script as they go along, although their are plans for them to meet and work together later on this year.

What they’ve come up with between them though is a delightfully twee, often blissful and summery album that has a lush, fresh feel to it. You get the idea of the magical soundscapes they are going to deliver from opening track Girl Of A Skin Coloured Blanket (No.2), but they take this concept even further on tracks like Kotoba No Yukue and A Vessel In The Fragrance both of which benefit from some neat flourishes courtesy of Looo’s recorded bird and water noises.

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