Newsgroup: it.fan.musica.rem
Titolo: [OT] Zero7

mi piacerebbe avere un vostro parere su "When It Falls" degli inglesi
Zero7. E' uscito già da qualche mese ma l'ho scoperto da poco tempo. 
non sto smettendo di ascoltarlo ormai da qualche settimana... e devo
dire che non ne sono ancora sazia! :P
Sarà che somigliano agli Air o in un certo senso ai R.E.M. di Reveal
(ma anche ai 'penultimi' Radiohead...), sarà quel loro giocare tra
accordi maggiori e minori - con prevalenza di questi ultimi - a noi
tanto caro... sarà che le vocalist - ma anche il vocalist - hanno una
bella voce (chissà come mi ricordano un po' i Corrs...), sarà che
ultimamente - causa poco tempo libero - ho ascoltato poche novità
discografiche... 
tant'è non smetto di ascoltarlo... personalmente lo ritengo un ottimo
lavoro, specie da una band che ha ancora molta moltissima strada da
percorrere... da ascoltare almeno una volta! ;-)
(reh)tiz

 Zero7.
Non so,spè che lo scari...ehm...che scendo e lo vado a comprare!!

 dire che non ne sono ancora sazia! :P
ciao le recensioni non erano state molto positive all'uscita di questo
secondo disco...  personalmente ho sentito credo solo un brano e manco
me lo ricordo, quindi non esprimo giudizi. ho invece in mp3 "simple
things", il loro album di debutto, che trovo decisamente interessante
anche se non veramente imperdibile. quand'era uscito erano diventati
abbastanza un "caso", soprattutto in inghilterra. questo secondo disco
mi sembra sia stato accolto in maniera molto piu` tiepida.
a proposito di recensioni, quella del Guardian era molto critica ma
anche molto divertente, tanto che me l'ero salvata e ora ti
copio-incollo:
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Zero 7, When It Falls
2 stars (Ultimate Dilemma)
Alexis Petridis
Friday February 27, 2004
The Guardian
   Nature  famously  abhors  a  vacuum.  And  so,  it would appear, does
the British record-buying public. How else do we explain the rise of
London duo Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker, who record as Zero 7?
   Their  success  seems  dependent on the absence of another studio
duo: France's Air, from whom the basic sound of Zero 7's  2001  debut
album  Simple  Things  was so obviously borrowed that it was difficult
to suppress the urge to alert Interpol every time you heard it wafting
around an upmarket clothes store or gastropub. Virtually every idea on
Simple Things  seemed  to  have  been  taken  from La Femme D'Argent,
the opening track of Air's own debut album, 1998's Moon Safari:  the
drifting  synthesisers,  the  fluttering  electric  piano,  the  string
arrangements influenced by Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson,
the loping basslines, the softly plucked acoustic guitar.
   Ordinarily,  you  might  expect  such copyists to be dismissed,
particularly given that Moon Safari had already been a huge  hit.
However,  Air's  success had created a commercial demand for more of the
same, and judging by their bleak, prog-rock  influenced  follow-up,
10,000  Hz Legend, this was something Air were unwilling to fulfil.
Instead, Simple Things sold a staggering 300,000 copies and secured
nominations for the Brits and the Mercury music prize.
   Three  years  on,  the  opening  moments  of  Zero  7's  second
album  suggest  that  critics of Binns and Hardaker's light-fingered
approach  to  chill-out music might be forced to shift their opinion. An
old vinyl record crackles. An electronic  buzzing hovers somewhere in
the middle distance. A glockenspiel tinkles disconnectedly. It is
sinister and intriguing,  a  thrilling  instant  where  it  seems Zero 7
have realised that using someone else's ideas isn't really cricket  and
moved on. This reverie is shattered by the arrival of drifting
synthesizers, fluttering electric piano, a loping  bassline, string
arrangements influenced by Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire De Melody Nelson,
etc. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.
   It is the first of a frustrating handful of moments on When It Falls
that imply Binns and Hardaker might have ideas of their  own  worth
listening  to.  Home  contains a genuinely exciting orchestral
crescendo. Somersault boasts a vague country and western influence.
These, however, are isolated incidents. For the rest of the time, Zero 7
stick doggedly to a blueprint that wasn't even theirs in the first
place.
   However,  in one respect at least, When It Falls suggests it is wrong
to regard the duo as mere plagiarists. Binns and Hardaker are veterans
of London's late-1980s club scene, and have embellished Air's sound with
one of the key elements of the jazz-funk and rare groove records
favoured by many DJs in this era: the Boring Solo. Traditionally
performed on the  Fender Rhodes electric piano - but adapted on When It
Falls for instruments as diverse as the harmonica (Look Up) and  what
sounds  like  a  celeste  (Over  Our  Heads)  -  the Boring Solo
meanders aimlessly along, with a strangely distracted  air,  as if the
Boring Soloist is doing his stuff with one hand and operating a TV
remote control with the other.  Eventually,  it peters out in an
inconclusive manner that suggests either the programme the Boring
Soloist was watching  has finished, or that, having bored everybody else
within earshot, the Boring Soloist has finally managed to bore himself.
   Perhaps  spurred  by  the  ease with which the Boring Solo has been
grafted on to their chosen template, When It Falls finds Zero 7
expanding their horizons and going on to be boring in other areas. Their
lyrics, for example, are so dull that  by  comparison, even the Boring
Solo takes on a strangely compelling sheen. The duo have often remarked
on their music's  suitability  for  post-clubbing "decompression
sessions", and you suspect that it is to these gatherings that their
words  are  addressed.  They  are  big  on  hollow portentousness that a
pot-addled, sleep-deprived brain might conceivably  mistake  for
profundity.  "Days behold, lives unfold," offers the closing Morning
Song. "So much untold, shades of gold, we've been sold." Been sold what?
A rhyming dictionary with most of the pages missing?
   The  album  is intended to chill you out, but it ends up having the
reverse effect. If you regard music as an art form rather  than  a kind
of lava lamp for the ears, When It Falls is likely to have you storming
about in a blind rage and trying to kick lumps out of your furniture
long before it ends. It seems so devoid of ambition, so blithely willing
to take  the  easiest  option: infuriating, given the music that
studio-tanned production duos such as Binns and Hardaker could
theoretically  be making. Unfettered from the old guitar, bass and drums
line-up, the whole of recorded musical history  is  theirs  to  be
sampled.  Technology is so advanced that they are limited only by the
boundaries of their imagination. In the case of Zero 7, that rather
appears to be the problem.
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