Harmonic 33 – Extraordinary People

Harmonic 33's debut, EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE, is like futuristic cinema library music eaten and digested by DJs. In other words: sweet! "Doo the Zoo," for instance, has a perky melody that's chopped and cut into pure funk, while "Moompah" is simultaneously heavy and light, like a balloon in the shape of a pink elephant. But when you get to "The Rain Song," the album really hits the stratosphere: the flutes and the vocal samples really evoke a delicacy while keeping the beat unabated. Similarly, "The Holy Track" takes a simple piano line and backs it with harpsichord and some break to evince maybe not a religious feel, but at least a melancholic one ("Where Have They Gone" is similarly moody). Kirsty Hawkshaw lends her operatic vocals to the dreamy "Underwater Lady," which I would say is a stand-out, if so many of these tracks didn't already stand out. The mystery of "Kaleidoscope," the unsettling creepiness of "Exotica," or the drifting quality of "Far Away Places" -- all these make for pure listening pleasure. Extraordinary indeed!

I know it’s important to keep up with evolution of sound, music, and genres, but why can’t I stop listening to Harmonic 33’s 2002 release, Extraordinary People? Did the common folk forget about the light, spacey, and spy-sexy trip-hop sound, or am I just not looking in all the right places? Even the group’s follow up album, Music For Film, Television And Radio Volume 1 on Warp Records did not satisfy my cravings for a similar sound. Out of fourteen tracks on this first full length Alphabet Zoo release, every single one is a standout! The label owner, Danny Breaks, even contributed a few cuts and scratches to the record with his turntablism skillz. The Harmonic 33 is Dave Brinkworth and Mark Pritchard, producing under various pseudonyms since the 90s. Brinkworth has previously contributed to Capio and the duo’s early drum’n’bass outlet, Use Of Weapons. Pritchard’s discography, on the other hand, is almost impossible to trace, with his numerous aliases and group collaborations, most notable among them with Thomas Middleton under Global Communication [note to self: revisit 76:14] and Jedi Knights. Although I can fully appreciate Pritchard’s latest gravitation towards a more Detroit influenced hip-hop sound with his Harmonic 313 moniker, I still turn back to Extraordinary People time and time again. This was one of the albums that made me want to write reviews almost six years ago, simply for the sake of spreading the music to everyone, thrusting with "here, hear!"