People Press Play - People Press Play

So you arrive at a party late, really late…as your eyes adjust to the dim light you hear smooth dub beats with swirling chords and the angelic voice of an unknown nonchalant lady singing….music that is the perfect wind down from what must have been a massive party. Except you arrived late. Me too. I arrived late to this 2007 release, almost a year late.

People Press Play are a Copenhagen foursome and ‘People Press Play’is their surprisingly accomplished debut album. Equal parts the Postal Service, Brian Eno and Death Cab for Cutie, they are a band in the traditional sense that they also play analogue instruments. Sara Savery’s lush vocals are equally at home over the dub infused athmospherics of opener ‘Girl’ as they are over the‘New Order-esque bassline’ of ‘Hanging on’. People Press Play is a down tempo album by a band rather than an ambient album by producers, and that’s an important distinction. The songs are carefully crafted, where melodies and electronic sounds progressively entwine around the vocals, or leave it hanging in mid air, unaccompanied. For silence is a rhythm too.

People Press Playwill suffer from some classifications imposed upon them. If I read ‘trip hop’ I’d think 1997, and move on. Down tempo can translate as ‘lacks excitement’, so I’ll settle in electronica ( despite the ‘band’ diatribe above) when I say that ‘People Press Play’is one of the best electonica albums that I have heard in a while. Check it out.

THINK: Plej meet The Postal Service in a jazz lounge.
READ: People Press Play’s myspace
WATCH:The vid for ‘These days’
BUY: People press play at inertia