Envelopes - Free Jazz

  by Jamie Rowland

published: 16 / 3 / 2006

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Review

Envelopes’ new single ‘Free Jazz’ is a brilliantly odd-ball piece of music. A mish-mash of several styles, it manages to be really retro and thoroughly modern at the same time. If I had to describe their sound, I would say that it comes close to sounding like the Sugarcubes, but there’s so much packed into each song that that really doesn’t do it justice at all. What I can say for definite is that ‘Free Jazz’ is a fantastic, catchy piece of techno-pop that I can imagine would go down with even the most closed-minded of people if you stuck it on at a party. The B sides are all as strong as the A side; ‘Put On Hold’ sounds like 80’s new wave for the first half, complete with vocoder, before bursting into a freaky kind of art-punk for the last minute or so. The second B side, ‘Pink Christmas’, is a mini lo-fi pop epic, with what sounds like a toy orchestra accompanying jangly guitars, piano, gentle vocals and bleepy electronics. Envelopes make the most satisfyingly messy music I think I’ve ever come across. If your dog did this mess on your carpet, you’d scoop it up in your hands and rub it all over yourself while laughing like a mad-man rather than mess around with all that rolled up newspaper business. You know what I mean ?

Track Listing:-

1 Freejazz
2 Put On Hold
3 Pink Christmas