Soft Landing: Soft Landing

    Brooklyn based band, Beirut, seems to have so many faces that it is hard to keep track of them all. Soft Landing is now sort of one of them, in addition to 1971 and Realpeople. Beirut is also closely tied with Alaska in Winter and A Hawk and a Hacksaw, two folk bands with Balkan influence as well and whose members perform with each other at times.
    Multi-instrumentalist, Zach Condon, is often the man behind the curtain. He started Beirut after traveling to Europe at the age of 17, became fascinated with Balkan musical culture, and began writing music on his own before enlisting the help of a number of musicians to record and join his band. But, in this case, Paul Collins, a member of Beirut is actually who started Soft Landing. In fact, Soft Landing was a project started while in school and was cut short when Collins joined Beirut to tour the world (with the hit success of its first album, Gulag Orkestar in 2006. Soft Landing was finally recorded and subsequently released by Ba Da Bing Records on October 12, 2010.
    Even so, I should say rightly so, you will hear a lot of folk influence in this LP, Soft Landing. The band's MySpace describes the group as being folk, easy listening and healing; but, I prefer world electronica folk as a more accurate characterization (but am only tagging this as world folk as the electronica takes a back role in terms of definition). For one, this is not really easy listening, elevator type music. It is quite different than anything you may have every heard before. One blog even called Soft Landing "pastoral jams". Seems fairly accurate to me.
    The album announces itself like a marching band arriving from around the corner, with drums and cymbals that mimic a drum line or Napoleonic era army band. There is this constant driving acoustic rhythm backed by the drum set, a myriad of electronic synthesizer sounds raining down melodies and interesting rhythmic material sometimes too, and Paul Collins trying to raise his voice through the somewhat cacophony--at least that is what it may seem like until you listen to it a few times. Do not get me wrong, there is a quiet moment here and there, especially the track "Pendelton Woolen", a very simple folk guitar song with bass. Then, "Papaya", the next track builds slowly until the driving alternating chords fall back into stride. A few different electronic sounds play key roles in the next track, "Awkward Flower", one especially obnoxious or ingenious (you decide) that stays on one pitch, repeating itself for a good bit (obnoxious), even becoming a pedal tone (ingenious). The LP ends with a dance remix type tune that is slightly out of character to the rest of the album, but it definitely shows the eclectic world nature Paul Collins and how far his influences stretch.
    So, just a preview description of the last few tracks, I think I will now actually let you decide, and upload "Awkward Flower" into the MixPod. It contains slightly more pastoral, along with the jam sections. Let me know what you think!