All Saints Records is the home for all things Ambient and has established its reputation over the years on the back of releases by the godfathers of the genre like Brian Eno, Harold Budd and Jon Hassell. French-Spanish duo VACABOU represents something of a departure for the label – though not strictly a precedent as stable-mate Kate St John testifies – as the music on their eponymous debut is predominantly song-based and has more in common with the mellow tunes of Air and Portishead than the dream states of Ambient’s masters.
The male component of VACABOU, Juan Feliu, cites Leonard Cohen as an influence and it shows on the album’s opening track ‘Meditation Park’ with its languorous beat and resigned atmosphere; like Cohen for the clubbing generation. Indeed while VACABOU would sit comfortably next to your Royksopp, Zero 7 etc. collection there is more to them than purely laid-back electronica. Feliu is evidently working to a different muse, one that seems less informed by current trends in electronica and downtempo, although Blue States do seem to be the closest companion. However, his admirable attempts at variation on the chilled out theme do not always work. Critically Feliu’s beats are too ordinary to lift the songs into that satisfying noggin-nodding territory that one expects, nay demands, from their contemporary Head music.
The vocal chemistry between Juan Feliu and his chanteuse Pascale Saravelli is clumsy with both parties functioning better when singing solo. Musically whole tracks and sections of the album are flat and characterless (e.g. ‘Rannveig’, ‘Barunka Left’) but a track may also suddenly spring into life and jolt the listener’s interest. An example of this is ‘Life As Interface’ which plays out innocuously for the first couple of minutes and then suddenly signals its intentions with a beautiful wave of melody, leads to a dreamy vocal performance from Saravelli and spices up the whole shebang with some wonderful cascading chords in the guitar-laden instrumental bridge.
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VACABOU the album is a sporadically interesting affair with glimpses of originality in the musical script but VACABOU the band is still learning its lines. Feliu has a laudable experimental edge but too often it is at the expense of a coherent album as if he is unsure where his interests really lie. When he can channel his flights of fancy into a song - as on the chilly rather than chilled ‘Iceland’ - then VACABOU suggest they can run with the big boys but on this first outing too much passes by without grabbing my attention, disappearing into bland notations and empty phrases. Saravelli has a pleasant voice but despite the Gallic inflection has yet to find a song to signal its distinctiveness in a market awash with female vocalists: the preferred human sound of DJs and studio boffins for conveying a blissed out state of mind.
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