Keep it Quiet

Quiet Village - Circus Of Horror

Oh man, what a treat.

As far as obscure rock and dance sounds go, Quiet Village is near the top of my favorites list. Now, imagine how excited I was to learn a Quiet Village full-length was in the works - their previous work only available on hard to find twelve-inches via keep-it-small Whatever We Want Records, and about a dozen remixes of top-tier talent, including François K, Gorillaz, Cosmo Vitelli, and Black Devil Disco Club among others.

The Quiet Village sound is really tough to nail down. The full-length album, titled Silent Move, is a hybrid of slow-motion disco, psych-rock, sundown surf tunes, and what sounds like soundtracks to Italian and French movies from the 60s and 70s. Some would call it Balearic, others might try to put it in the downtempo box - but there is something far too freaky going on here for me to imagine these songs playing in the W Hotel lobby or the rooftop pool at the Standard.

I'm sure that hard-to-nail-down freakiness comes from the mind-grapes and mutually deep influences of Quiet Village's creators, Matt Edwards, aka unstoppable techno hit-maker Radio Slave and Rekids label-boss, and producer/engineer and library-music fan, Joel Martin (look for the CD of unreleased soundtrack music from Dawn of the Dead that he compiled). Another facet of the music that I love, both as a DJ and a music fan, is the fact that the line they walk between original sounds and samples feels incredibly blurry - are the songs all new, or are they really crafty re-edits? I don't know, and I don't need to know. The sound they have present here is sheer brilliance.

Have a look around at the micro-site for Silent Movie - here - for samples and a video interview with Matt and Joel. The album is out May 13th via our friends at !K7, and will be available everywhere for purchase and download (Amazon, iTunes, your favorite indie retailer). Very highly recommended.