KICK IT TO THE KERB

Troopa

Never heard of Troopa? Nope, me neither, but they went to the trouble of sending me a record to listen to so the least I could do was listen to it. Actually, the least I could’ve done would be to ignore it and let it sit on my desk gathering dust, but that’s just splitting hairs. Now, you know me, I’ll listen to anything, whether it’s good, bad or Westlife and I’ve been known to listen to demos and pre-releases in the past. This is a first, though, nobody’s sent me a record to listen to before and it makes a nice change. Almost anybody can knock up a CD at home, but a record… a record is different – chances are you know somebody with a CD writer, but how about the facility to press vinyl? No? That’s why I’m impressed here. The record also includes a bit of paper saying how good the record label thinks the tune is and that they have high hopes for it, which is nice. Well, the effort’s gone into the packaging, that’s for sure, but I bet you’re wondering if the music’s any good. I was, but then I’m meant to find these things out, so I gave it a whirl. After that, I put it on the record player because it’d sound better that way. The first impression I got from hearing this was “There wasn’t much money thrown at this.” Now, you might think that’s a horrible thing to say, but hear me out. It sounds as though the song and its remixes were produced on very limited resources, the backing track sounds as though it was produced on a computer and the singer doesn’t have any fancy voice modulators or anything to hide behind – exactly the same sort of conditions that got White Town a No.1 single eight years ago, in other words. That said, if you’re a small record label, you can’t just chuck money around in order to make it sound amazing, what you do is make the most of what you have. Here’s an idea of how they’ve done – there are five mixes of the same track and all of them have their own distinct personality. I can think of several remixers who would kill for the ability to achieve that. The basic track is a rather smooth and chilled out R&B number (for some reason the start reminded me of 1970s Stevie Wonder), but - maybe thanks to its limitations - there’s no messing about. You’ve got your tune and you’ve got your singer who does his bit without going overboard – no unnecessary whining, groaning or theatrics. Not only that, but considering his voice is literally stripped bare he does a sterling job. I’m not a fan of R&B, but I can appreciate what they’ve done here as the end result sounds as though it’s the very best they could achieve. It’s not an all guns blazing you’re-going-to-sit-up-and-take-notice song, it’s just a mellow, relaxing little tune that meanders along gracefully for four minutes. I did notice one thing though – the copyright on the sleeve is dated 2005, but on the record itself it’s 1998. If this really is seven years old (which I doubt), it’s held up pretty well.

I DON'T CARE

Ricky Martin

Bet you thought he’d gone for good. Now, the song itself isn’t too bad (an agreeable enough lump of urban music for those of you who like that sort of thing) and Ricky Martin does what he can, but the tune paints a strange picture in my head. This picture depicts Usher and his record company boss deciding which of two songs will end up on his Confessions album. One of them is Yeah (very poppy, very accessible, the kids’ll love it) and the other is I Don’t Care (fairly poppy, little bit edgier, but still with the compulsory guest rappers). In my picture, Usher tosses a coin and that’s how this song ends up being offered to Ricky Martin, albeit with a hint of “here you go sunshine, sing this, we’ve already done the backing track (with someone else in mind)”. As comebacks go, this is more than a little disappointing.