Cat Empire - Steal the Light

  by Dave Goodwin

published: 15 / 11 / 2013

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Review

Don’t you just love the unexpected and random in life? There's a great scene in the film ‘Beetlejuice’ where all of a sudden you get Winona Ryder doing ‘Shake Senora’ and bursting into happy calypso dancing. Imagine my delight when out of my car speakers a random calypso beat started to make my shoulders jerk in time. Waiting at the traffic lights, I started to click my fingers and move left to right and back again to the amusement of the chap in the inside lane. An unexpected moment in an otherwise drab sort of a day. I had pre- loaded my CD player and listening to for the first time to the Cat Empire and ‘Steal the Light’. The Cat Empire, who are Melbourne-based, have been making music for over a decade. Their whole musical concept is about transcending genre, so it's hard to know what to call the music they create. It's sort of where hip-hop meets reggae. It's a little bit jazz, a crossroads where Cuban meets Australia. I think. Indeed, in their early years their jazz/reggae/funk/latin/gypsy/hip hop tag grew longer and longer, but it was an apt description and, more importantly, it didn’t matter what it was, as long as people were dancing. These days the Cat Empire consists of Felix Riebl (percussion/vocals), Harry J. Angus (trumpet/vocals), Ollie McGill (keyboards), Ryan Monro (bass), Will Hull-Brown (drums), Jamshid ‘Jumps’ Khadiwala (decks/percussion) and the Empire Horns who are Kieran Conrau and Ross Irwin. They are apparently a band with no guitars, with no easily definable style and no corresponding haircut. There are some great stories though hidden here, like the way Riebl began writing the lyrics for this masterpiece in Athens whilst writing and performing in the opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympics. He wrote his next set of ideas in New Orleans in April/May 2012 whilst on a visit to friend John Porter (producer of 'So Many Nights') after a US tour with the Cat Empire. He went to the Jazz Festival there, which had been a long time dream. Captivated by the mystery of the city, its extraordinary history, its Caribbean colours and European architecture, he ended up stopping for two months instead of a planned week. He wrote the rest of the songs for the album in Melbourne when he moved into a new studio. It's quite clear that this music is for dancing. The rhythm is up front and centre and has a beat that can't be defined or categorised too easily, and in the band’s own words 'has grown out of its “multi-genre’ concept into something wilder, a spontaneous explosion of melody and rhythm that contains many flavours.” If you like your music uplifting, funky and ska'd up to the max and different, then this is for you. There's an African beat in ‘Wild Animals’, not too different to moments in Graceland and there’s a Spaghetti Western style start to a calypso turntable-infused ‘Prophets in the Sky’. Straightforward dance-ability reigns on title track ‘Steal the Light’ and also ‘Brighter than Gold’. The frantic ska vibes on ‘Still Young’ will have you skanking up to the kitchen table, while in contrast ‘Like a Drum’ will have you Salsa-ing round the fridge on a Friday night. But there's laid back bits too like the wonderful horns on ‘Open up your Face’. If they were ever short of cash they could sell ‘Go’ to Caro Emerald and make a fortune, and mark my words here and mark them well, if ‘Sleep Wont Sleep’ doesn't make you smile with a big - and I mean big - cheesy grin from ear to ear, from the first note you might as well be declared dead form the hair downThe album ends with ‘All Night Loud’, and some harmony Hammond and drum machine. But before you rush on to iTunes to download this little gem, there is three more minutes of bliss I haven't told you about. As if the rest of this album wasn't enough to tire you out switch the CD player to repeat on Track Four, and let the Northern/Tamla beat of ‘Am I Wrong/’ do the rest. Oh my golly gosh!

Track Listing:-

1 Brighter Than Gold
2 Prophets in the Sky
3 Steal the Light
4 Am I Wrong
5 Wild Animals
6 Still Young
7 Like a Drum
8 Open up Your Face
9 Go
10 Sleep Won't Sleep
11 Don't Throw Your Hands Up
12 All Night Loud

Band Links:-

https://www.youtube.com/user/thecatemp
https://www.facebook.com/thecatempire
https://instagram.com/thecatempire/
https://twitter.com/thecatempire
http://thecatempire.com/
http://store.thecatempire.com/collecti