The Bop Apocalypse

FIRST OFF, the title – a steal from Ginsberg’s ‘Footnote To Howl’ – is a little disingenuous. The Bop Apocalypse is not the jazz-hardcore fusion one might expect, but rather a dazzlingly diverse montage of approaches, quoting everything from hip/trip-hop to big band shapes to torch songsmithery to post-modernist pop.

Here, Somatic plough pastures that are, if not exactly virgin, then still fertile: useful signposts might include Barry Adamson’s most accessible jazz devilry, David Arnold’s revisiting of John Barry’s best Bondsmanship, the Propellerheads’ abduction of Shirley Bassey, and Portishead’s Billie Holiday-in-a-sci-fi/spy-thriller experiments.

The latter element is the predominant one, although this collective – with their press-ganging of the Kick Horns and the John Altman Big Band on tracks like ‘Go Between’ and the brilliantly cross-bred Franco-Cuban routine ‘La Chica’ – are never going to be lumped in with Bloom, Sneaker Pimps et al.

So far, so cool: ‘Throwing For Six’, ‘Rocking Chair’ and ‘Walter’s Theme’ prove beyond all reasonable doubt that producer-musicians Damien Logan and Bernie Miles know how to operate a sampler, sketch some fairly complicated string charts and mike up a bloody big drumkit. Fleur Davies, meanwhile, has a pretty pleasing way with a tune.

Unfortunately, under all the finery of the arrangements and the grandeur of the production, the songs themselves are pretty nondescript. A real pity, because Somatic are 65% there: all that’s missing is that crucial grit, a drop of blood on the lyric sheet, a shriek of shock from the in-house chanteuse. Just a little too often, as on the anaemic psychedelia of ‘No. 9’, cast and crew opt for the fey rather than the fiery.

To sum up: The Bop Apocalypse is drop-dead gorgeous, but suffers from a weak heart.