Ensemble - Ensemble
Release type, label: album, Fat Cat
Release date: Sep 25 2006
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Olivier Alary's work carried out in his Ensemble guise is an album of sensitively produced music, combining samples, synth and more conventional instruments in a clever way, making it sound like a natural union. So why doesn't it move you?

The problem is that Ensemble, by Ensemble – but really by Olivier Alary – with its neutrally-sung, meticulously choreographed vocals by various guesting indie heart-throbs, fails to be emotionally involving. Those numerous identities and that trendy instrumentation just don't gel into a convincing whole.

However there's still something there for an Alary fan - the previously released ‘Disown, Delete’, with Chad Marshall of Cat Power on vocals, strikes an ideal balance between music, lyrics and voice - but why not just buy the single? The other songs are neither lyrically strong nor vocally ‘cast’ very appropriately to fit the various identities demanded by the songs.

That's the big problem with collaborations. On paper they look like they're going to unify the creative powers of some major talents into an inspired whole and pull in the audiences of all the artists to sell big, but what usually happens is that the resulting works show us exactly why people are in small bands rather than sprawling collectives: not everyone was meant to work together.

In this case the sensitively pensive mood of the music is usually offset by an overly twee sound, for example of Mileece crooning melodramatically about failures on beautifully constructed opener ‘Summerstorm’ or singing about ‘glitter and sparkle’ on ‘All We Leave Behind’. So we are left with an album, frankly like most others out there today, that is a front runner both technologically and in terms of instrumentation, but which fails to consistently match the quality of its central song. This album might have been a very different story if Marshall had been the sole vocal contributor, so hopefully Alary will do more work with the rich-voiced feline in times to come.

This joins the ranks of countless other ensembles that need to understand one another better.