#The rapture echoes how to

It's impressive then, that even with this newfound attention to detail, the Rapture still maintain a flailing energy and enthusiasm that most of the other dancepunk bands could only fake. While nothing on Pieces reaches the velveteen club-readiness of 'I Need Your Love', the band's previous muddy immediacy is replaced by a more meticulous approach: the keyboards polished to a glossy sheen, the guitars eased back into a supporting role, percussion real and programmed blended seamlessly. What the Rapture have returned with is a sound less concerned with retaining the raw, gritty punk half of the equation: From the fade-in harmonies and discrete four notes of bass-synth that announce the album, it's clear the group is going for a cleaner sound, surely helped by Paul Epworth and Ewan Pearson, who man the boards for eight of 10 tracks.

#The rapture echoes how to

Fortunately for the band, Pieces turns out to be a strong (at times even spectacular) album, one that finds the band evolving from where they left off with Echoes while restoring some of the old hope that indie kids have, indeed, learned how to dance, and no longer have to be quite so obvious about it. Even with the three-year vacation, Pieces seems destined to face a tidal wave of righteous anger from those who felt scammed by dancepunk's brief promise, a piñata to absorb the beatings of the jilted. Into that unwelcome environment comes Pieces of the People We Love, the Rapture's third full-length and very patient followup to Echoes. As the general opinion of the heady dancepunk days of 2003 faded into disdain, the Rapture- as the sound's most-recognized face- took the brunt of the negativity. Meanwhile, dancepunk went on to disintegrate before our very eyes, flaming out even faster than most hastily-classified genres, with nobody digging past the most obvious influences (read: Gang of Four) to do more than echo Echoes. The internet, fickle mistress that it is, began dissipating the aura around the Rapture as quickly as it had conjured it up, with listeners speculating that they were mere puppets for the DFA, or plagiarists of the early 80s, or merely the Emperor's New Hipster Jeans. Gold stars all round.Then, almost immediately, things began to fall apart. Echoes has a big opening, and a bit of a loss of direction (and fat) around the middle, but it has a cracking four-track finale to which shit just won’t stick.

Whilst it definitely won’t be to everyone’s taste, there will be moments here that everyone can like – just don’t expect everybody’s favourite moment to be at the same time. Other, perhaps, than a ‘special’ school for the mentally deranged. Listening to Echoes, you can’t help but wonder where in the name of hell four guys got the education to make it all fit together and actually work so damn well. Their keyboard personalities are an entirely different species again, tinkering around wherever and however they feel. The rhythm section seems to have no clue that the lead guitar and vocals are happily screeching away as a punk duo, whist they themselves are thoroughly involved in a rocking house / disco band. Whilst you can imagine this all sounding a bit weird and pretentious live, (the band photos in the inlay seem to be marketing them as a ‘real’ group.) kudos to Mercury for really letting them loose in the studio to represent themselves, ‘cause it all mixes up like a big keg ‘o dynamite.īut The Rapture are a weird, disjointed band, make no mistake about it. ‘Open Up Your Heart’ is a lovely soft Pink Floyd-cum-Flaming Lips number that’s one of the few ‘straight songs’ on here, but then it segues into the hard, house-beaten ‘I Need Your Love’, complete with a mixture of instruments – sopranos and glockenspiels (as well as those keyboards) to name but a few.

Some of the tracks on Echoes can get a bit grating on first listen, but stick with them just when you’re reaching out your finger toward the skip track button, it’ll invariably shift gear to something entirely different. Kraftwork, this is most definitely not (no offence to the German maestros though, obviously). As most of the members double up as keyboard players this diversity isn’t too surprising, but what’s nice about it is the fact that it breaks the ‘too many cooks’ rule – Echoes never really descends into a multi-layered hell of synthesisers.

The Rapture come across as many things, but if you had to pin it down in comparisons, it’d probably along the lines of a cross between eighties, NY art-punk and a weird combination of house and prog-rock.