The Boats - Ballads Of The Research Department

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5...according to our Business Lady on Fri 13 Jan, 2012.

The Boats are a bit of an office favourite here at the towers most likely due to the Hood connection. That's right, The Boats feature the talents of Craig Tattersall (ex-Hood, The Remote Viewer, and owner of the Cotton Goods label) as well as Andrew Hargreaves of the Tape Loop Orchestra. I've personally not paid them a huge amount of attention as my span is short and their music demands patience. On 'Ballads Of The Research Department' they take a slightly scientific slant to the appropriation of the ballad as a songwriting form, stripping it of it's traditions and rebuilding those concepts as they see fit. For example, the majority of the album consists of instrumental as opposed to lyrical ballads, leaving acres of room for emotional reinterpretation. Even when adopting vocals they choose the talents of Japanese vocalist Cuushe, who's melodies suggest all manner of emotional response without you necessarily being able to understand what she's saying. Tattersell and Hargreaves understanding and appreciation of real instrumentation, traditional tape based recording techniques and actual performance is what sets these pieces apart from the work of their contemporaries and makes for a much warmer, inviting record. Skeletal electronics, minimalist beats and healthy dose of acoustic instruments (piano, strings etc) may sound like a tried and tested method but their hands, it sounds fresh as the day. An obsession with the later works of Talk Talk seems as significant to these lads as it does the rest of the post Hood projects doing the rounds nowadays. Excellent stuff. Well worth your time and money.

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“We wanted to present the ballad in a new form employing sounds as well as words to tell our stories. These stories are not as lyrical as the ballad form of the past and are open to the listener’s interpretation. These are ballads of our time that are aware of the past. They are investigations into the uncertainty of our time, love, woe and hope.”

The Boats are a duo consisting of Craig Tattersall (ex-Hood, The Remote Viewer, and owner of the Cotton Goods label) and Andrew Hargreaves (Tape Loop Orchestra) as well a rotating roster of guest musicians and vocalists. While Ballads of the Research Department is their 12k debut, it follows up a string of critically acclaimed and genre favorites such as Sleepy Insect Music (Flau/Home Normal, 2010), Words Are Something (Home Normal, 2009), and limited editions released on their own Our Small Ideas imprint. With The Boats, 12k, who continues to move away from the “electronic” tag, further plays the line between experimental electro-acoustic sounds and structured music creating an intoxicating hybrid of instrumentation, vocals, electronics, piano and drums.

With Ballads of The Research Department The Boats explore a duality created by the traditional “ballad” and the modern notion of science and research. In their words:

“We wanted to present the ballad in a new form employing sounds as well as words to tell our stories. These stories are not as lyrical as the ballad form of the past and are open to the listener’s interpretation. These are ballads of our time that are aware of the past. They are investigations into the uncertainty of our time, love, woe and hope.”

They work in these grey areas by combining elements of various musical styles — ambient, pop, classical, experimental — creating overlaps, gaps and layers, nudging the boundaries in the most sincere and natural of ways. The Boats’ music is warm, rich and complex but never over-complicated. They rarely rely on any sort of studio trickery instead opting to use the most honest tools to get the sounds they want — be it proper recordings of acoustic instruments or recording to analogue tape. This doesn’t, however, override a passion for experimentation as they are happy to throw away the rules in favor of the aesthetics of error.

On Ballads... The Boats are joined by long-time collaborator Danny Norbury who supplies cello throughout the four extended songs on the album. From Flau Records, Japanese vocalist Cuushe drapes her soft voice over the gentle “The Ballad of Indecision” accompanying its warmly pulsed beat, hazy textures, strings and synthetic blinking. On “The Ballad of Failure” (featured on 12k’s latest Sampler CD), perhaps the album’s most structured and stand-out piece, Chris Stewart’s voice alongside the acoustic drums and harmonies flirt with a mixture of shoegaze and ambient music, encapsulating the album’s enveloping and dreamy atmosphere perfectly.

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