MUSIC REVIEW: ‘Footwork’ dances in too many directions
Grade: C
The press release for its latest CD, “Footwork,” says that Colorado-based band Chronophobic “has traditionally bounced around between jazz, hip-hop, funk and world music.”
However, after listening to a rather strange mixture of all the above mentioned styles on “Footwork,” this supposedly positive point turns out to be just the opposite.
The record’s kick-off song, “Bean So Hot,” is a prime example for the strange style-mixture all over the record. It starts off with an extra-funky groove that immediately reaches whatever body part you prefer to shake to “that funky music.” Unfortunately, this goes on only for the first minute, before the song suddenly switches to rock and then continues to change its style about every half minute. Listening to the rest of the album, it turns out that this is more the rule than the exception.
It sometimes feels like the band members each had ideas for different songs and instead of actually writing eight different songs, they just crammed everything together into one. This concept may have worked back in 1975 for Queen’s three-songs-in-one masterpiece, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” but it definitely doesn’t work here.
If you take a look at the song list on the back of the very professional-looking CD cover, you may also be surprised by the length of certain tracks like the seven-and-a-half-minute “Deep Puddin’ Pt. 1” and the over nine-minute-long “Or was it something deeper, Captain?”
“Deep Puddin’ Pt. 1” for example is a “where’s-the-melody” free-jazz instrumental that, on the plus side, showcases the excellent musicianship of the band members. However, on the negative side, after about five minutes into the song, it slowly increases to finally reach its climax in the weirdest style mixture of the whole record with free-jazz trumpets, horns and saxophones, hard-rock guitar and drums and spacy-sounding keyboards.
However, the album is professionally well-produced and the better songs on the album like “Breakfast for Diner” and “React” really show the potential Chronophobic would have if they could decide on one direction, at least for the duration of one song.
“Breakfast For Dinner” probably falls into the better category because it not only has a really good groove like many of the other tracks, but it also only switches back and forth between two styles, jazz and funk. And the funky hip-hop song “React,” believe it or not, even stays in the same mood for the whole song.
The record finally comes to an end with the appropriately named “Outro.” This instrumental rock ballad is another perfect example for what the band could achieve if they gave all the styles they want to incorporate in their music at least one whole song on the album.
So, yes, maybe Chronophobic has an award-winning horn player among them and maybe they are “a leader in Colorado’s original music scene,” as their press release suggests, but, you know, there’s only one way to the top and you won’t get there any faster if you change direction five times each song.
Matthias Petry is a senior majoring in print journalism. Comments can be sent to matthias.petry@gmx.net.