April 2002 Review
Fog City Music:
What a completely refreshing change these guys are. At one point as much as I love punk rock, and I do, I long for something else, something new, here they are. Trip hop at it's finest.
Quoting their bio "karmacoda: It was a simple objective, really. Karmacoda began as a collective effort between three musicians in search of something new. That something started while Brett "B." Crockett, Bruce "Fully" Fulford and Heather Pierce were chatting over drinks in a San Francisco tiki bar, and realized their mutual trip hop/drum 'n bass obsession.".
That really sums it up. We have them up for Band of the Month here at Fog City. I can't wait to hear more from these guys. I was completely drawn in and found myself looking for ways to hear the WHOLE song from their website. There are VERY VERY few bands that use this marketing technique, of only letting you hear part of the songs so that you'll buy the disk that really works.... here is one... STRONG STRONG BUY !!! This is Dot Com stock in 99' .......
Splendid Music Review:
Because the band photo shows Karmacoda's three members lounging in a low-rider while sporting alterna-rocker-cum-rapper duds, I expected something like the calculated yelping of Creed. Despite these initial prejudices, I only needed one minute of the opening track, "Motion Picture", until I was begging for both forgiveness and more volume. Instead of guitar-oriented whining, Karmacoda's Fully, B., and Heather Pierce spool out soulful electro-pop in a leisurely fashion. On tracks like the aforementioned "Motion Picture", the mellow, sensual groove feels like top shelf Depeche Mode. Icy synth swooshes and spare piano touches provide a skeletal framework upon which the dueling male and female vocals are free to writhe. Elsewhere, a nearly New Jack Soul takes precedence over goth, yielding radio-perfect numbers such as "Frail". While either end of the spectrum represented by these two songs would be enough for a fine album, the band goes one step further and integrates them time and again. In many ways, this makes Reco Mended feel like a retrospective of the past fifteen years of radio-friendly electro-pop. "A Desolate Heat" bolsters the spare, rolling rhythms of trip-hop with a vocal brimming with the sly, powerful sexuality of Garbage's Shirley Manson. "About the Day" plays a similar mix and match game by combining the soundtrack smoothness of a Moby instrumental with the playful mystery of Denmark's Gry.
Because of the clean production and mid-tempo grinds, this album begs for radio play. This radio readiness, however, will probably put off some of the snootier listeners, for whom airplay is a sin far worse than mere poor quality. This is a shame, because the disc is nothing more than well-crafted, well-executed music -- not a desperate grab for stardom. True, it may lack the ugly edge of "underground" dance music, but this doesn't nullify the boundaries the band pushes. This is particularly evident in their choice of percussion sounds. Rather than relying on the standard drum machine presets, the trio turns these tasks over to a cornucopia of squishy and unusual sounds. Thus, while the mood evoked by the rhythms will be familiar to anyone who was alive during the '80s, the execution is something not found in most radio playlists. For this reason, the band's inventiveness may be lost in the immediate pleasantries of their music. Nevertheless, Reco Mended is an album packed with surprises as well as grooves.
Dilusions of Adequcy:
Something about the whole down-beat, trip-hop genre of music - as exemplified by bands like Tricky, Portishead, and others - makes me think that I'm not quite hip enough to really enjoy it. It just reeks of coolness and style. I expect the band members of Karmacoda, a like-minded band, to be wearing expensive outfits and coolly proclaiming their hipness at every turn. I could be wrong, and even if I'm not, just listening to the album makes me feel a bit more hip.
Karmacoda are not significantly different from their peers. Many of their songs are extremely similar to Laika and Moonshake, and others have a very Portishead sort of feel, but they do just enough to keep their songs different. The trip-hop, down-beat drumming leads the way for a mellow, flowing dub sort of feel. But the band adds a kind of ambience throughout, either through the mixing of male and female vocals, the use of light piano, or other effects. Both singers have amazing voices, and the way they mingle or trade off in songs makes these tracks quite impressive.
It's the little things that make Karmacoda stand out from their contemporaries. The almost ambient-sounding piano that trickles throughout the mellow trip-hop of "Motion Picture" gives the song an almost otherworldly feel. Both singers work on "Free to Be," with Heather Pierce singing slow over an up-tempo beat and the male singer (Brett Crockett or Bruce Fulford) does a Tricky-like spoken part. There's almost an electronic world-beat feel to the ultra-cool instrumental "Amsterdam Room," which does have a European feel, and the dreamy, swirling, playful pop feel to "En Passing" makes it one of my favorite songs here. The closing "After That, Because of That" picks up on the same feel, with layered drum effects, vocals, and a very thick sound to give it a very unique and slick quality.
The tracks that Heather Pierce sings on tend to be most similar to Laika tracks, as her voice sounds very similar to Laika's Margaret Fiedler. "Frail" is very laid-back and mellow, with Pierce's voice not quite as sultry as that of Portishead but very smooth as she croons, "you are not frail." Some very cool electronic elements spice up the otherwise very Portishead-y "A Desolate Heart," and Pierce takes a Bjork-like approach on the gorgeous and less beat-driven "Swan."
At times I feel like this band sounds a bit too much like other trip-hop style bands, but at others I completely fall for their ultra-cool, slick and sultry sounds. There are enough unique flares - usually through some intriguing electronic sounds - to keep this from sounding too derivative. And the voices, the attitude, the atmospherics are beautiful. By the end of this album, I'm completely sold, and you will be too.
