Kasabian “Velociraptor!”
Attention! We address to all Euroradio's listeners. It became known that the British band Kasabian let a Velociraptor out last week.
We strongly recommend you to stay with us in the near future, and we promise to figure out everything about this predator.
Kasabian assure that Velociraptor will get you anyway, eat you or suck all your blood, but despite this the beast turned out to be very intelligent, pleasant and even a bit sentimental. Only one track of the new album out of 11, called “Velociraptor!” may be considered a "predator style" one.
On the whole, it looks like Kasabian develop in a stable and regular way, the way the future honourable legend of the British rock should. The band always wanted to stick to the canons, and they always tried to counterbalance all the new, weird and non-standard things in their music by various references to the grands. Apart from this, the musicians underlined many times that they had become the inheritors of Oasis after their break-up, and marmelized all the young bands with no regrets, saying that good music in Britain is played only by themselves and probably Arctic Monkeys. Maybe this is the reason why when you hear the starting song of the album sometimes it is difficult to say who sings it - Kasabian or Arctic Monkeys.
Besides, this summer Arctic Monkeys released an absolutely plain and vapid album with perfect sounding and absolutely non-conforming hooligan-like name “Suck It and See”. Unlike Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian had enough courage and fantasy not to rest on oars and not to get stiff because of their own grandness, but to keep on changing and surprising. As a result, apart from their trademark arrangement techniques, the squad suggests a lot of unexpected twists. They do not get embarrassed that some of those twists awake a feeling of déjà-vu, as Kasabian have never been ashamed of using allusions to the bands which they respect.
For instance, the track "La Fée Verte" reminds the Beatles by the melody and the way of arrangement. The song tells about some peculiarities of using absent and contains the following line: “I see Lucy in the sky, telling me I’m high”. However, the chorus takes the song back to our time of rhythmic indie-rock.
Basically, the album “Velociraptor!” should be placed among the achievements of the good old Brit-pop, this time it's psychedelic with the elements of electronic music. In spite of the Kasabian's oaths that they were inspired by Radiohead, Nirvana and Pink Floyd when they were recording the album, it is hard not to notice quotations of Oasis or Stone Roses, like in the track "Re-wired". As for unexpected twists, Kasabian surprise by the elements of synth-pop and dry electronic tambourines, like in the track “I Hear Voices”.
In the end, let us say that Kasabian's dinosaur turned out to be rather toothy to clinch to its audience, and rather mysterious and various, so that it would be interesting to watch it for a long time and to study its anatomy gradually. Therefore, it is obvious that Velociraptor is not going to die.
“Velociraptor!”:
1. "Let's Roll Just Like We Used To"
2. "Days Are Forgotten"
3. "Goodbye Kiss"
4. "La Fée Verte"
5. "Velociraptor!"
6. "Acid Turkish Bath (Shelter from the Storm)"
7. "I Hear Voices"
8. "Re-wired"
9. "Man of Simple Pleasures"
10. "Switchblade Smiles"
11. "Neon Noon"
Text read by Vital Zyblyuk
