Various ~ The World Is Gone

Everyone else has written about this CD so why shouldn’t I? And if I’m late jumping on the bandwagon and ill-informed about the music, well what the hey? Cor, Grime meets Folk – The World Is Gone unites two currently popular music forms in one unexpected package – great! Synthetic breeze-block rhythms that stumble along, turning whatever they encounter into dust, but with wistful female vocals. What could be better?

Okay, okay, I’m not really that crass, honest. Except that I have been loving this music since I first soulseek’ed and then bought it. It’s playing this very moment on the stereo. I’ve read various mutters – and more – on the boards about how it’s not Grime, or its variants, at all and that the mysterious (yawn) duo aren’t a part of the scene so have no right to claim, yada, yada. To which my response is a little it of ‘fair enough’ and a lot of ’so what?’ I’m a bit frustrated by the lack of credits for the singers as I’d be interested to know who they are. I didn’t like it at all on first hearing and the second time round it really reminded me of Massive Attack and a little of Portishead. Now I just hear it as Various and rather wonderful. Initially I played it on my laptop and iPod, then popped the CD on the (reasonably decent) kitchen player and discovered whole new levels of sound. It’s an awful cliche, but entirely apt in this case, that there’s either good music or bad music. Whether it’s Dubstep meets Folk or not, The World Is Gone is great pop music that seems to make complete sense, at least to me. In my limited dipping into the wider media, it seems to have met with a mixed response which is a shame. Well worth hearing.