3. Timber TimbreHot Dreams
Once in a while a band comes along that you get behind no matter what they do. You buy all the albums and love every note. I was watching a show on TV and it was like this death row documentary about why this kid had killed and all that kind of stuff, and this music started up and I was like, wow! That’s a great blues! That’s a great noise and it sounds now! So I Shazammed them and it said, ‘Out tomorrow morning: Hot Dreams by Timber Timbre’ so I went out and bought it straight away. From the first fade up of the first song, I just thought that this was something special. And there is something special about them. I saw them play live at the Scala and that sealed the deal for me. It’s such a beautiful, old-yet-modern sound. The vocals have this kind of 50s-sounding echo on them, which sends your mind to a certain period and certain values, and from that standpoint they can kind of go wherever they want.
And the way that they sound as well; there’s a real sympathy and care to the sound of the instrumentation and how it’s presented. They’ve got some incredible arrangements going on. You take the title track when they bring in the sax and the figures and it’s incredible. And fantastic use of the vibraphone – it’s just beautiful.
The other thing is that it’s not too dense and kind of stripped back but it conveys the mood so wonderfully. There’s a kind of ‘woah!’ that goes on. They’ve made a proper dent into my modern day listening because I get little bit, ‘oh, I don’t listen to enough modern stuff and I’m still stuck in the 70s’ so when something like this comes along, it’s fantastic and I support them wholeheartedly.
