The Big Pink - Velvet

Sat 19th Sep, 2009 in Music Reviews

While the pairing of Milo Cordell and Robbie Furze take their name from the debut album of sixties collective The Band, they themselves are providing a template of how to make it in the modern music environment.

Their first single Too Fast for Love became instantly sought after due to its limited pressing of 500 copies world-wide, which they followed up with a limited edition 7” of the rather cracking song Stop the World. The Big Pink are also mixing in meticulous musical circles with both boasting quality resumes, their live shows incorporating the who’s who of the electro genre and pristine producers as additional band members; and having already landed support slots with a number of big-buzz acts including TV on the Radio.

The pair also have their foot in the door of mainstream and celebrity culture thanks to Furze’s emotional entanglement with Lily Allen. Add to the already simmering mix an NME Award as ‘best new act’ and the fact they’ve been signed to no less than 4AD previous home of the Pixies and Cocteau Twins – and The Big Pink look set to explode.

Velvet, self produced by the band and mixed by Alan Moulder, is the first single for the band on 4AD and has already been adjudged by the NME was top of their recent list of Ten Tracks You Must Hear. The song itself is a restrained, almost woozy affair, beginning with an electro-tinged atmospheric build-up before the ghostly vocals kick in. Restrained beats prod along behind the lovelorn lamenting verses before droning guitars kick in and take things up a notch for the chorus.

The song is haunting without being too heavy, and like the material, at times silkishly-smooth, but also reveals some rougher edges when rubbed against the grain. The single also contains three remixes of the track, the first – by Gang Gang Dance – bloating the track with extended explorations into trancier electronic territory. The Mount Kimble remix blankets the song in an incessant trip-hop type beat with a heavily echoed and soulful refrain of the lyric “These arms of mine” featured. Rounding things out is the quite sparse treatment by Van Rivers and the Subliminal Kid which takes the largely unchanged verses and submerges them into a much murkier place and is probably the most likely of the three to warrant repeat listens. And just to top it all off, there’s a nipple on the cover. Get in on the ground level for the rise of The Big Pink.

Velvet is available through 4AD/Remote Control