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LP+CD
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STRIKE 146LP
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With its surreal melodies and wayward electronic elements, Eagles, the third full-length by Berlin duo Bus bursts at the seams with intricately woven and extremely detailed soundscapes. Even though it's virtually impossible to put any definite genre term to it, it's a varied collection of tunes that nevertheless works really well together. As a matter of fact, some of the tracks compiled on Eagles were recorded years ago, and a few of them have even seen a release, but some things take time, and for Tom Thiel and Daniel Meteo, this meant putting together album #3 a whopping eight years after the second Bus album Feelin' Dank came out. Like the duo's debut effort Middle of the Road (2003), said predecessor pretty much offered a mix of dub, hip-hop and electronica, with additional vocals by MC Soom-T for good pop measure. On Eagles, the vocal parts have disappeared, and we're left with the purely instrumental oomph and allure of their tracks. Reuniting after a five-year hiatus, Bus returned to the studio in 2012 to enhance their combined digital production skills with some bold (and meticulously crafted) trial-and-error experiments. Initially, they revisited a couple of older compositions -- long intended for release, together with a handful of tracks they'd already published, reworking and improving them. To achieve this, Daniel Meteo even picked up a guitar, adding spherical layers to tracks like "Westen" (first released in 2002) and the brand-new "Grove," layers that sound vast and never-ending like infinite horizons. Elsewhere, "Pure Singa" with its warm percussion groove, feels like it's lingering in the air, and yet the track has incredible depth. "Miami," in comparison, has almost a big-band feel to it, albeit a big band with a keen ear for (current) electronic music. The resulting album has a refreshingly spontaneous-sounding vibe; it runs the gamut of electronic sound, boasting surprising melodies and rhythms at every turn. Includes a free CD with 3 bonus tracks.
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