Album Review: Beaty Heart – Till The Tomb
2 min read
Charlie Rotberg, Joshua Mitchell and James Moruzzi are together the British alternative outfit Beaty Heart hailing from South London. Fast forward two years since their debut full length release, 2016 lets the trio unveil Till The Tomb – a well-crafted look at the many shades of colour that propagate within contemporary UK music. Having wide influences that extend to the depths of reggae, house and jazz-funk – this album is no diversion. Capable of establishing memorable musical roots in your brain for weeks after listening, it melds together light and fluffy vocals with thoughtfully distinct instrumentation. It’s this perhaps, that enable Beaty Heart to simply blend these components together, creating something of praiseworthy excellence.
Armed with a brimming artillery of samples at the ready, there is a gathering of rewarding complexities that the trio makes a point of incorporating into the record. The lead and backing vocals merge with a lovely breeze in the album’s title track, Till The Tomb. Spreading a sunny positivity within the experimental production lengths sensed in the instrumental prospects. The next track Soft Like Clay uses a conjoined series of idiosyncratic moments that propel with them an unavoidable destiny for radio play. It’s a lush three minutes of poppy illusory funk, doused with cinematic atmospheres and the many sampled percussive elements – of which include hand claps, and the sounds of shattering glass. Beaty Heart have been knocking heads in the studio with David Wrench, and Dave Eringa for this album – both of whom have a resume including producing records for the likes of FKA Twigs, Caribou, Wilko Johnson to name a few. Sitting beside organically expansive music, definitive of a time period reliant on quality songcraft – Till The Tomb is no different, with songs like Green Grease reflective of this. It handles a rocksteady, UK drenched vibe complete with dub settings and a thumping bassline drum mixtures. There are also harder, more upbeat and dancefloor accommodated jams like Slide To The Side. It nails down a sub-bass thumping, grimy aura – fast-forwarding a heavier side to the angelic and subtleties of the vocals.
Genuinely, the album moves in and out of experimentally different musical times, gaining a momentum of class, influential calmness and changing invigorating pop rhythms. There’s a pulsing experimental charge that plugs into an infectious groove throughout the entirety of Till The Tomb. Rendering a modernist’s take on spaced out originality, you can take confidence in knowing this record by Beaty Hearts will get you singing along within the first few moments of listening.
