Music for Collapsing People

More pleasant downtempo from a label that specializes in it. Moodorama's second album, MUSIC FOR COLLAPSING PEOPLE, despite its title, is much sunnier than their first. "Sinzing Sunset Boulevard" is lounge-ready, while "Loss of Sense" has a quick detour to Africa and "Mango Mongo" to Latin-America. American R&B gets a shout-out in "Are U Comin'." The centerpiece of this album is the fun and funky "Viama," which switches gears from a upbeat little number into some dark acid breaks, then back again (but this time with whistles and a melodic synth line that's all smiles.) This, unfortunately, is followed by the lame rap of "My Vibe." The mood darkens some on the latter half of the album, as evidenced by "Uncertainty" and "Mono Luv." Nice, but not outstanding.

True to form, Moodorama continues with their schizophrenic take on modern music, blending various styles and vocal arrangements throughout without taking all of the predictable turns. This is a tough thing to do artistically, since it's hard to sell your message or record to ears set on one type of music, especially an audience that's been sold on your work as being one thing ("they're a chill-out band!" you'll hear, but unjustifiably so) when your albums contain so many other elements and courses of action. Some people pull this off (Nicolette's "DJ kicks" compilation, any Smith & Mighty record and, to a lesser degree, DJ Cam's "Mad Blunted Jazz") but Moodorama is still struggling to get a balance that the average listener can get a kick out of.The CD starts off strong and consistently enough with the first couple of tracks, and if they had stuck with making an album that investigates the territory that the first two tracks open up ("Sinzing Sunset Boulevard" and "Loss of Sense") we'd have likel had a 4 or 5 star record on our hands. As it is, they catch the party bug soon after, and the album begins to spin out of control in production execution, tone and flat-out song quality. A lot of it comes off as an attempt to show off their resume ("Look! We can do hip-hop! We can do Latin music!"...yes, but none of it astonishingly well enough to justify its inclusion on the record) and that rarely works to anyone's advantage. Plus, at a mere 10 tracks, you really should stick with what you do great, since you end up giving everyone one track they can bear, but no record they would buy.

One day my young brother came to me claiming that I had to listen a song from a new CD he'd just bought... It was the 10th of this CD. I've been so amazed that I went listening to it 5 times ! The thing is that compared to this song, the rest of the CD is just correct in my opinion. Lots of nice rythms, but the music sounds still a bit repeatitive. Anyway, " Mindless Moments 3 " needs to be listened to.