Nu:Tone – Words And Pictures

Well I personally believe this is overall the best LP that Nu:Tone has done. Tracks like Shine In and Wild Life (Nu:Tone Remix) are like no other tunes I've heard to be matched since, so creative and energetic. There's not one tune on here I don't like, and thats a very very rare thing for me to say.

This is Nu:Tone trying something different and very much succeeding, hope to see this kind of material from him again. I don't think 2011-2012 was ready for this, the liquid surge in 2017 onward would have eaten this up.

"Back of Beyond" sounded, at times, underdeveloped. Like one idea going round for minutes, one sample, one variation. When Nu:Tone released "Medical History", an mp3 compilation of not released tracks, this sounded much better than the second album, where the pop attitude and Nu:Tone's production skills could shine. So, which way to go for the third album? All vocal tracks, bombastic production, long songs and pop attitude to the max.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work as it should. Or it does not work at first: there is so much care behind each second of each track that this album becomes a natural grower. But the vocals are sometimes problematic: the vocalists are good, or very good, but their melodic lines added to the melodic line, the rhythm line and sometimes the distorsion line is just too much for our ears, mostly on the album opener, "Let the line shine in", that exhausts between the "THIS IS A HOOK LISTEN!" kind of composition, the multi-layered and reverbed vocals and the wobble breaks. Or the 4hero colaboration, which ends up being quite bland. Some months later an instrumental version of the album was released, and these tracks work better, much better.

But there is something that we must give credit to Nu:Tone, and this is his soul sensibility. He likes heartfelt songs, he loves the tunes to touch you while you dance at them, and his aim to the melodramatic is just tender, either in the "I will survive" kind of theme in "Win the fight", or in the naive love song "The Feeling" (featuring a wonderful Ben Westbeech, by the way). The excellent progression between "Piece of you" and "Broken" (this one a very good roller whose only fault is to repeat exactly the same bridge twice) is also noteworthy, but in the end this is a Hospital Records release at heart which does not quite reach the crossover appeal as Netsky or Danny Byrd could... but which, because of that, will age much better. Soulful breaks, electro nods ("The love has gone" is another example of track that works without voices), and all kind of drum n bass programming. Recommended, with care and with little doses at first.