Review of Valley Of The Bears Album by Laroca

Review of Laroca's album Valley Of The Bears

Laroca Valley Of The Bears Album

Quite pleasant I thought. Pressing play and hearing the orchestral band opening of 'Brassic', the first track on Laroca's new album 'Valley Of The Bears'. Rather similar to Beirut I thought, very pleasant indeed. A couple of minutes in however and we start to see the difference between the one man genius and Laroca. Enter some hip-hop style drum beats. Pleasant just became even more pleasant I think.

Laroca are an instrumental Electronica outfit who fuse traditional sounds such as strings and woodwind with drumbeats and trippy sounds. You could describe them as Zero 7's, or Air's second cousins twice removed if you so wished, although their approaches are slightly different (but track 'Carpe Diem' does have some French rapping - nice!).

Being majorly instrumental tracks and relatively laid back music you can stick this CD on in most situations and just let it play, it's excellent music to chill out to, to have your tea to, or a dinner party if you are that way inclined, or its perfect funky cocktail bar music.

Each track has quality to it, although nothing really jumps out at you. Which is possibly a drawback to the album as each track blends into another and you wouldn't be able to tell your mates that so and so track on the album is a cracker. Although 'Yallah Andalucia' the Spanish themed track was rather good, and I may tell my mates about it.

This however does not really matter, I don't think this style of music is meant to jump out and grab you anyway, it's meant to be for all the cool cats on Bora Bora beach, chill-axing after a night of throwing out shapes and drinking gallons of water. Oh yes and consuming large amounts of cheap, freely available dance drugs.

Laidback, eclectic and takes no effort to listen. Everybody should have a few albums of this nature in their collection, for the lazy, carefree chill out moments in life.

3/5

Pablo Roffey


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