The Beat Surrender

Underfelt is the brainchild of Ed McGregor, from the opening track, their unique sound is something to behold. Apparently this involves and I quote “the art form involves taking an electronic noise making devise such as a keyboard or a furby and intentionally buggering about with its circuitry” It’s original and quite noisy but the actual music, vocals and lyrics hold the tracks together.

The first track a-part has a good blend of the electronic with good old rock, all together creating a quite unique sound. However on the next track, Arm Control, the special effects (for want of a better word take over a little too much for my liking. Speak and Spell is more of what I would have expected from an electronic track, the difference here is the vocals which are in the main spoken rather than sung, combined with the squeaks and bleeps give an overall sound almost like a dance track or club track.

The next track, Aquarium would have sounded just like Mumra if it hadn’t been for the bleeps etc, I liked this track even though it was a little on the slow side but the vocals and music were nicely put together. It stood out for me from the other tracks. Unfortunately, by the next track Difference, the bleeps and squeaks were getting annoying, the actual music and vocals were really good, but the overuse of the effects started to grate a little. Last track was Serca and I loved it, this time the balance of music and effects was just right. This surprised me as I had thought the vocals were excellent throughout the other tracks and were perhaps the redeeming quality for the album. This along with opening track a-part and Aquarium were excellent the other tracks were too much of a mishmash of sounds, which didn’t really jell for me.

My worry for this band would be that the effects lead the music and this will be hard to develop further, without moving the music on it could all become too boring. However it’s nice to see someone brave enough to try something different, good luck to Ed McGregor, will be interesting to see what comes next.