Honeyroot - 'Sound Echo Location' (Justmusic) Released 09/05/05

Fresh from putting their heads on the blocks in releasing their much-debated cover of Joy Division’s sacrosanct ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, Honeyroot give us this, the plush and ethereal ‘Sound Echo Location’. Throughout the eleven tracks, the sound that Keith Lowndes and former Heaven 17 frontman Glenn Gregory concoct takes you on a journey to hazy Mediterranean sunsets. It’s all enough to make you sit back, relax and pour yourself a nice jug of chilled sangria.

Imbued with a very Zero 7 vibe but much better, opener ‘Losing My Mind’ with its delicate guitar plucks, dreamy “Hey, hey, hey, yeah” female vocal sets the sultry tone that pervades throughout the opening few tracks. Elsewhere, as the names suggests, ‘Sunrise, Sunset’ continues the ambient and unfeasibly chilled vibe with its swooning orchestrals and crashing gongs. While ‘Sweet as Honey’ ups the otherwise unhurried pace ever-so-slightly, peaking with sultry orgasmic utterances – yes, it’s very much music to listen to while making the beast with two backs. Perhaps a slight chink in Honeyroot’s armour is that subconsciously such dreamy tracks merge into one and fail to carve their own identity. Later track ‘Blue Space’, for example, would definitely make a potent film soundtrack but is perhaps too similar to the opening few tracks to deserve much credit.

Fortunately, however, Honeyroot have other gems stuffed up their sleeves that deviate in musical direction.  The stuttering, spliced ‘State of Mind’ is refreshingly discordant and is diffused by ‘Leftism’-esque electronica, and the pulsating title track is a lot harsher, deeper and menacing than moments elsewhere. Later ‘Starshine’ with its glorious trumpets and husky female vocal is perhaps the album’s apex – really it has you reaching for the dictionary to describe the gorgeous sound. On top of this, the penultimate track, ‘Summer Sky’, comes complete with splashing water, delicate keys, seagulls, panpipes and flamenco guitars (obviously) - if ever a track transported you to warmer climbs then it’s this one. It’s only the otherwise stunning, stripped-down take on Joy Division’s classic that seems strangely out-of-place, perched on the end of the album as an almost afterthought.

Given the context of listening to ‘Sound Echo Location’ watching a stunning sunrise, arm-in-arm with your mates and chemicals from the night before still running through you bloodstream, this album would be five stars hands down. Yet the fact that it’s tied to the context of being sunset or come-down music is perhaps a slight downfall in that it may prevent some of the public who may not have experienced such moments from ‘getting’ it. Yet this doesn’t detract away from the fact that Mr Lowndes and Gregory have created an accomplished and radiant debut album. Lovely stuff.