Mat Riviere - Follow Your Heart Album Review

Bleak, desolate, detached, dark, morose, melancholic and introverted. Music from Norwich doesn't get gruffer than this! Not wishing to follow in the esteemed footsteps of fellow Canaries lovers, Cathy Dennis and Beth Orton, Mat has decided to take the self reflecting, irritable loner stance of a bored bedroom dweller. Twiddling and tweaking his way onto the regarded Brain Love Records, this is his debut solo release, ''Follow Your Heart'.

Having been the home of the first British art movement outside of London, Norwich does have a history of pioneering creations. Is this one of them? Well, Plan B certainly seem to think so having said of Mat's work..."Solo eccentrica from the UK's DIY mecca, Norwich", and there was me thinking B&Q came from Southampton. The album certainly has its DIY touches and at times does feel like you're listening to a Fisher Price/Texas Instruments orchestra accompanied by paper wrapped over comb, and whatever household objects are to hand. (Mat is probably best left on his own as apparently he doesn't work and play well with others!) Mat & Casio may well be emblazoned across his windshield.

Follow Your Heart is a mixture of Joy Division introspection, White Town improvisation and Depeche Mode early exploration. The monotone delivery never quite manages to offset the awkward development of some of the rhythm patterns, clever though they may be, and interesting to a point, they cease to be enjoyable if they become tiresome and irritating....or maybe that's the point. Either way, the displaced and out of time movements work when they fuse rather like a jazz piece that however complicated somehow finds a structure and form. The best examples here are 'The Give IN', 'Castroreale' and 'Evening Drive'. When the music fails to engage and becomes a difficult listen is where you lose interest, as with the almost Fall esc 'Take My Sums And Add Them' and dire drone of 'Godless Girl'.

'Follow Your Heart' has some clever ideas and explores unfamiliar musical territories. However, sometimes you can't help but feel it's all trying a little too hard, wanting to be pioneering at the expense of providing good music. The 'production', if there is any, is woeful at best, and FYH could benefit hugely from a makeover. The challenging nature of some of the songs and the concepts that are being developed are meritable but ultimately unsatisfying.

"When the knife pattern in the butter substitute spells out a sad truth", exactly Mat!

Andrew Lockwood.