Breton – War Room Stories (2014) [Qobuz FLAC 24bit/44,1kHz]

2014 release, the much anticipated second album from the British Indie band. War Room Stories was written during a year spent touring incessantly and playing festivals across the world. It was recorded this summer at the Funkhaus in Berlin – a building with the same otherworldly weirdness as Breton’s beloved creative HQ, The Lab in south London, which was demolished last summer to make way for luxury flats. Breton also employed the services of the Macedonian Radio Symphonic Orchestra who appear on five tracks throughout the album. The band recorded the tracks earmarked for orchestration on a laptop, translated them into sheet music and flew to Macedonia where the 44 piece orchestra then played them live in the studio. The stunning results can be heard on ‘Envy’, ‘Closed Category’, ‘Legs and Arms’, ‘S Four’ and ‘War Room Stories’.

Although War Room Stories is just the second LP by London-based indie collective Breton, the band has numerous EPs and collaborations, both audio and visual, to their credit. When they originally set up their BretonLABS studio in a South East London warehouse, their modus operandi was to become a truly collaborative, D.I.Y., multi-media arts machine with each member contributing in a variety of ways to the grand vision of what could be considered a company as much as a band. Their debut LP, 2012’s Other People’s Problems, was a jagged pastiche of urban London stitched together with manipulated found sounds and blending elements of dubstep, hip-hop, electronica, and indie rock. On their 2014 follow-up, War Room Stories, that bold experimentation still runs wild, but it’s tempered by a slightly more contemporary pop sound as heard on the album-opener “Envy,” whose buoyant chorus almost echoes some of the more melodic moments of Mike Skinner’s Streets tracks. The melodies continue to pour out on the hooky but menacing “Legs & Arms,” the driving “Search Party,” and the dreamy, late-night “302 Watchtowers.” It’s a welcome development for the band and comes at no expense of their bold, experimental spirit. Interestingly, the album was recorded after the band relocated their operations from London to an old studio in East Berlin, which was once the headquarters of communist propaganda-producing GDR radio. The artistic playground of modern-day Berlin seems to have had its influence on the gentlemen of Breton as they turn in an extremely creative, yet accessible sophomore effort.

Tracklist:
01 – Envy
02 – S4
03 – Legs and Arms
04 – Got Well Soon
05 – Closed Category
06 – National Grid
07 – Search Party
08 – 302 Watchtowers
09 – Brothers
10 – Fifteen Minutes

Download:

mqs.link_BretnWarRmStries2014Qbuz24441.rar

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