Helping Hand is a tasteful album, Biyikli and Charrier have put enough into each track to make them exciting but don’t ever become overwhelming or overworked. They pace themselves and the album feels perfectly planned out to keep leading me on, letting me rest when I need to before grabbing me by the hand again. Despite this feeling of the album being laid out to keep the listener listening, the music still sounds entirely spontaneous and full of life.
Sub Rosa
The production on the album is a treat for the ears. Sounds dance around in space, especially on the title track where the melody sounds like it is coming from the speakers but the noisy percussion and occasional strums of an acoustic guitar sound like they are being played live around my head. Details like this are the things that make an album go from good to special for me. Artists that don’t put the effort into the production are normally the ones that the phrase “They are much better live” was made for. That being said, the best production in the world can’t help a poor performance but, as evidenced in this case, a decent production is the icing on the cake that is a good performance.
Multiple listening sessions are a must for Helping Hand. The amount of fine detail in the music is immense, tracks like “Strange Feeling” and “Separation” are like a pair of fine meals as small subtleties add up to a wonderful whole. Blending melodies with noise is nothing new but the combinations here are worth hearing. Many of the tracks utilise piano, guitars and Fender Rhodes for the main scaffolding of the song before seemingly random sounds like doors being shut, sporadic percussion, rustling of paper and snippets of conversation are introduced into the mix. Granted this probably sounds like half the albums reviewed on Brainwashed but there is a spark of creativity in Man’s music that piqued my interest.
Helping Hand finishes as strong as it starts with a trio of songs that on their own would have made me happy, let alone with the rest of the album. The most interesting of these is the seemingly straightforward “Revenir” which begins with a slow but determined bassline and a simple drum loop. Before long there are drones, drips and decidedly odd noises supplementing the music. As with the rest of the album, it is similar to a slew of other artists but has something about it that raises it from the pack.
Man have really impressed me which is a shame because now I’m going to have to spend money on picking up their other releases. I’m hoping that they live up to my expectations and that Helping Hand isn’t a fluke work of brilliance.
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