Nov 7, 2014

SPC ECO - The Art of Pop (2014)

Release:

SPC ECO

SPC ECO are a duo from London, they formed 8 years ago and have released 5 albums and 7 EPs to date. S E record and produce all of their albums from a small home made studio in North London. SPC ECO consists of vocalist / lyricist Rose Berlin and multi instrumentalist / Producer Dean Garcia. They have been making music together for more than 20 years. Rose is Dean's daughter, Dean is a maverick record producer with an illustrious, diverse and colourful career performing, producing, composing and recording with a wide range of very well known artists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Garcia) Rose is a Sound and Light artist and recently graduated with a first class honours degree from Camberwell College of Arts. Rose experiments with the potential for sound and light to be used as atmospheric mediums, her intention is to bridge the gap between art and music.
Rose sees her voice as an atmospheric instrument and uses it to take you to a world of your own. Rose is a gifted and unique artist with a strong creative grounding within music and sound recording that dates back to her very early years recording songs with Dean in their front room studio. Their musical pairing was simply meant to be. S E is best described as an amalgamation of experimental and genre bending musical ideas, although diverse it's always recognisable due to the S E branding of Rose's distinct voice combined with Dean's ability to wrap multi fractal sound around her.

THE ART OF POP

The Art of Pop…The title says it all really. This is an album about Art and Pop. Quite unlike any previous SPC ECO release in almost every way, apart from the fact that it's made by the same two people. ( Rose Berlin and Dean Garcia ) There are no guitars, there are no dense walls of sound and noise that we've come to expect from a S E song. Miraculously those elements and trademark niches are not missed at all on this record. They have been replaced with cleverly produced artfully pulsed electronica, memorable catchy melodies and a vocal delivery to die for. Rose Berlin's voice has always been the icing on top of a very densely layered S E cake, her voice seems to go from strength to strength from one release to the next as she matures and explores her voice. The vocals on T A O P are made by someone with great skill and ability, not in the sense of them being highly trained, polished and technical but the complete opposite, they sound effortlessly natural and completely at home.
It's fascinating to ponder where S E will go from here. We've had flavours of this record with tracks like Push and Delusional Waste from previous releases but this collection of songs seems to completely embrace those two and explore their foundations to the core. The albums heart and soul is finely tuned by concentrating on the main and minimal ingredients that make up a great Pop song, that being the melody, structure, sonics and pulse. All four elements are all present and correct, right the way through from the opening song Burn It Down to the spaced out and Shamanic tribal spook tones of Full Flow we are treated to song after song of minimal future Pop noir that has the charm and depth to make us dance and cry at the same time. Rose Berlin lights these songs with a brightly lit black bulb and Dean's maverick production skills are at full noir tilt throughout. S E are not scared to explore the music they love and this record is all about that. Nothing wrong with that.

https://soundcloud.com/saintmarie-records/sets/spc-eco-the-art-of-pop/s-G4wdy
https://soundcloud.com/saintmarie-records/spc-eco-hear-me-now



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