Giants

An album that might not have been released

When the market offered in 2008 a best-hit collection from the popular outfit Chicane, many were ready to take it as a farewell from the musicians. It turned out so that dance-music performers have reputations of instability. Those who were worshipped and played everywhere yesterday can give up all their titles to a fresher who has come out of nowhere today and seems able to repeat their success, albeit short-timed. Unless you bring to the table something new and interesting, you have to be prepared to leave the throne. Nevertheless, Chicane seem to have something else to say. In fact, it hardly can be called a band, because it’s rather a project of the British musician, composer and producer Nick Bracegirdle. Only on the stage does Chicane grow into a full-format band. No matter how good the response to their music is, the future of this ensemble is still in the dark. Searching for new musicians and battling in court against his label, Nick was forced to spend less time with music. As a result, in the last ten years, Chicane have released only three studio albums. The latest one was dropped in the summer 2010 under the title Giants. How good it is that the musicians managed to scrape time and efforts to make it.

Coming back to advance

The dance music is the music where everything is examined, tried and invented already. Some of its representatives from time to time offer new arranging or original samples, yet fail to provide anything really unprecedented; and probably they even theoretically can not do so. Giants, although there is a fourteen-year distance lying between this album and Chicane’s first effort, does remind you surprisingly of their debut, Offshore. Here is the reason why those longing for the Chicane of the second half of the nineties will be delighted after listening to Where Do I Start, and Middledistancerunner with electronic sound as light as the summer breeze. Out of the two parts of What Am I Doing, the second one looks more preferable thank to the processed voice of the R&B and soul singer Lemar. On the whole, if you compare this CD with the 2007 album, Somersault, you will effortlessly discover a number of differences. Songs are now longer, and this enables to play with structures to intrigue the listenerо. On Giants, the male voice is not alone, as the female voice is also involved, which does good to the music. To verify it, please, check out So Far Out To Sea with almost hypnotizing woman’s vocals. The return to the roots proves to be a wise step.

Nice danced music with a flavor of summer

This is the music that marked the first pages in the Chicane history, the music that is imminently associated with warm and careless summer nights spent at the open air dance floors. Giants is a set of thirteen tracks to relax your thoughts and ease your mind. There is no deep meaning in them to be found after hard analysis, nor are there sophisticated intonations of vocals to bear concealed messages. This music does not make you focus on it solely, but serves to create a nice soundtrack to some other activities of yours. This is the pattern Chicane chose to follow fifteen years ago. A number of experiments conducted within the following years only proved that Nick Bracegirdle and his comrades should advance in that direction on and on. Giants will not be the best album in the band’s discography at least because Chicane simply did one more time what they used to do many years ago. However, this is exactly the release multiple supporters of this outfit were looking for. Definitely, Giants is a pleasurable listening for everyone who is keen on light electronic dance music.