Loud, dirty, crunchy, dreary, spacey, moody, electronic, ambient, heavy. These adjectives all describe Big Black Delta’s first full-length album.
“BBDLP1,” self-explanatory once the acronym that makes up the album’s title is deciphered, is Jonathan Bates’ (the sole member of Big Black Delta) debut LP. The album, while fitting snugly into the genre of electronic music, still manages to show a bit of variety within that classification.
Bates, who has worked with such musicians as Nine Inch Nails’ Alessandro Cortini, Daft Punk and White Sea, takes a step out on his own with “BBDLP1″ and shows that, while he definitely knows how to craft interesting music, he’s still got room to grow.
The album starts off with the cool, steady beat and spacey synthesizers of “Put the Gun on the Floor,” before introducing some distorted guitar-focused work on “Capsize.” The momentum carries forward into the third track, “Huggin & Kissin,” one of the album’s standout songs, with heavy beats and guitars.
Unfortunately, the album loses much of this momentum with the rather dull fifth track “Betamax.” Luckily, it’s quickly followed up by the cool, dirty and almost-sloppy sounding “IFUCKINGLOVEYOU,” which really helps show the versatility of Bates’ tastes. This single track clearly has its roots in electronic music but includes some cool vocals, distorted horns, a full background chorus and more intricate drums than previously shown on the rest of the album.
The rest of the album, comprised of the tracks “Dreary Moon,” “The Zebrah,” “PB3,” “Roost” and “GimmeARide,” dissolves into a more ambient, too-spacey-for-its-own-good piece, and ends rather anti-climactically. While there is a little hope with “The Zebrah,” as it is at least a bit more cohesive than the track preceding it and the tracks following it, it still ends up being just too plain to really stand out.
The album as a whole has a fluent sound to it, and all of the tracks manage to sound distinct while still being recognizable as songs from Big Black Delta. It’ll be interesting to see how the sound shifts on future releases, but hopefully Bates manages to keep the essence of the tracks the same.
Overall, Bates really shows that he has a good ear for cool-sounding electronic music, and what he does with the genre is certainly very intriguing. It might be more exciting, though, to see what he does if he either steps out of the boundaries of electronic music or refines his sound a bit more. As it is, “BBDLP1″ proves to be a fun ride but nothing to get too excited over.