REVIEW: Presence, All Systems Gone (Ark 21)
- Wilson Neate
Presence is a collaborative project helmed by Nottingham-based producer Charles Webster and featuring a clutch of vocalists and musicians, including Sara Jay, Shara Nelson, Steve Edwards, Mathew Herbert and PK Joyce. This collective may borrow its name from the title of the seventh Led Zeppelin album, but the seamless melding of smooth soul, techno and house effected by Webster and friends is about as far from the sound of Page, Plant, Bonham and Jones as you could get.
Although he may not be a household name, Webster has certainly been known to fans of house music for some time. Not only did the Presence singles "Better Day" and "Sense of Danger" precede this album, but Webster had already established a reputation as a versatile house and garage DJ, and as the man behind the aliases Sine, Symetrics, Lo:Rise, Furry Phreaks and Love From San Francisco.
Presence have been labeled Britain's answer to Air, owing to their shared penchant for drifting, melodic textures. But on All Systems Gone, Webster occasionally creates a heavier and sharper sound suffused with breakbeats -- particularly on tracks like "Favour Nothing." And while Presence take a leaf out of Massive Attack's book, offering a downbeat counterpoint to big beat euphoria, Webster achieves that effect by taking a deep house and soulful techno approach, as opposed to the dub and trip/hip-hop route of 3D and company.
All Systems Gone is best described as dance music that you can chill to. But then, although its sound is inevitably rooted in house and dance, it isn't a house album or even a dance album per se. Rather, it draws from a rich palette of forms, rhythms and moods to serve up some stylish pop music doused in melodies -- often of the melancholy variant -- that move effortlessly between and beyond all the labels and terms.
Above all, this album comprises memorable, textured songs created out of the leitmotifs of house, much in the spirit of Everything But the Girl's Temperamental or Deep Dish's Junk Science. Indeed, it's intriguing that a veteran practitioner of a dance form in which traditional song structure and narrative have never figured highly on the agenda should draw so much influence from what he calls "proper songs" -- he cites artists as diverse as Rickie Lee Jones and Kraftwerk -- and sculpt an album of varied tracks, almost all of which stand up on their own as hit material.
One of the keys to the success of this album is Webster's rotation of vocalists who enhance the uniqueness of each track -- and he's assembled quite an impressive line-up here. Acclaimed for her work on the first Massive Attack album and her subsequent solo ventures What Silence Knows and Friendly Fire, Shara Nelson impresses on the soulful deep house numbers "Sense of Danger" and "Matter of Fact." Sara Jay, whose breathy vocals graced Massive's Mezzanine, is equally effective on the slow, gospel-evoking "Far Far Away From My Heart" and the techno-based "This is You."
But the highest praise here is reserved for Steve Edwards. Perhaps best known for providing the falsetto on Finley Quaye's "Even After All," Edwards shines through all of his contributions on All Systems Gone. Whether it's on the techno garage of "Future Love" and "Better Day" or the breakbeat-laced, Detroit sound of "Been 2 Long," Edwards's Curtis Mayfield-style vocals add a very special ingredient to Webster's ecumenical mix.
