Fedde Le Grand - Output

Flamingo Recordings: Cat. # FLAMCD001D
Released September 2009

Track List:
1. Wild ‘N Raw featuring Rob Birch (4:54)
2. Feel Alive featuring Will.I.Am (4:13)
3. Scared Of Me featuring Mitch Crown (2:49)
4. Hard Days Work featuring Ida Corr (4:04)
5. Shotgun featuring Camille Jones (6:20)
6. Back And Forth featuring Mr. V (3:23)
7. Let Me Be Real featuring Mitch Crown (3:22)
8. My Faya featuring Andy Sherman & Dorothy (5:50)
9. 3 Minutes To Explain with Funkerman (3:42)
10. Rockin’ High featuring Mitch Crown (3:52)
11. Noise Reduction with P.L.F. (4:00)
12. Output (F.L.G. Edit) (4:08)
13. Dany P-Jazz - New Life (Fedde Le Grand & Funkerman Re-Edit) (4:07)


IN BRIEF: You’ve heard better.

It’s been three long years since Fedde le Grand became an overnight star, and he’s managed to maintain his profile on the strength of being an in-demand remixer and endless compilation duty. Still, though anyone can point to Put Your Hands Up For Detroit as a Fedde le Grand track, he’s had some difficulty in escaping the hit single’s legacy; few, if any, of his subsequent tunes have made anywhere near the same kind of impact. Not that anyone should have expected it anyway -such a track is a once-in-a-year event, and unless your name is Daft Punk, seldom replicated during the course of a career where house music’s concerned. Yet, the question remains: will he be able to live up to the hype of his past?

Well, no. It’s as simple as that. Let’s face it: three years is a long time between breakout success and debut long-player, and Grand may have missed the boat on really propelling his career to dizzying heights. Instead, most of the Swedish House Mafia has surpassed the Dutchman in popularity, while a Frenchman double-lapped him in the same amount of time. His chart success has been negligible since Detroit, with perhaps his recent re-rub of Fatboy Slim’s Praise You being the most significant. Beyond his loyal fanbase within the ‘handbag house’ collective, most will struggle to name-drop much of his recent material, especially with regards to his new album Output. I’ll grant Grand has been plenty busy with running his Flamingo Recordings imprint and headlining mainstream dance festivals, so he may not have had as much time to spend on his productions. Therefore, it’s all the more reason to bring his best to Output. Yet, if this is his best, perhaps Grand has been nothing more than a flash-in-the-pan sensation after all.

The weird thing about Output is it finds itself in a no-man’s land of attempted crossover pop album and credible underground house collection. Additionally, he’s thrown in every single style of house music he can think of (handbag, electro, minimal, tech, French, etc.), either in attempt show off his broad music palette or to hedge his bets that someone will enjoy at least a couple tracks if it closely matches one’s taste enough. On nearly every single track, he almost succeeds in accomplishing this too, but Grand’s far-too simple songwriting continuously holds these tunes back.

First, the pure pop tunes, of which makes up most of the first half. Rob Birch of the “yes, they’re still around” group Stereo MC’s opens things up, and as expected provides a suitably positive-party vibe. Grand, on the other hand, doesn’t really do much to give Wild ‘N Raw vitality. There are piano flourishes, trumpet blasts, and an adequate groove, all of which will provide some level of cursory enjoyment while you hear it but never really grabs you either. It’s the sort of tune you’d expect to hear on the radio and promptly forget right afterwards. And sure enough, once the Will.I.Am featuring Feel Alive hits, you do. As for that track, the rapper repeatedly refers to it as a “stinky tune”, which I have to agree -it does stink. The only guy who could credibly get away with using ‘stinky’ as a synonym for ‘funky’ was Ol’ Dirty Bastard; Will.I.Am, on the other hand, comes off ridiculous and clueless, all the while adding zero street cred by throwing in “punk motherfuckers”. Oh, and the track just sounds like a generic Black Eyed Peas cut anyway.

And so it continues. Scared Of Me apes Benassi, Hard Days Work is nondescript ‘handbag-electro’ (plus auto-tune!), and Shotgun is the ever popular barely-euphemistic “I want your penis” track. Really, every track on Output sounds like something that’s already been done, and already been done better. The feeling begins to sink in where you wonder why you’re even bothering to listen to this album when there are several superior examples of the sound out there. Even the straight-up ‘handbag’ moments are trumped by the likes of Roger Sanchez.

I’ll grant there are times that do make you feel like Output is worth your while. Let Me Be Real and Rockin’ High are good fun while they last, even if they’re total style-bites of French house (specifically Stuart Price) …but they don’t last at all. Heck, even for pop songs, these feel short; appetizers rather than delectable meals.

In fact, it’s one of the overriding problems with this album. The ‘short’ feeling has nothing to do with song lengths, but song writing. The Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations (as an example of a great pop song) is shorter than nearly everything here, yet feels epic compared to Grand’s offerings. This abnormality is made even worse on tracks that stick to a typical house format. There are some good grooves to be had - 3 Minutes To Explain, Output, My Faya - but just as you’re getting nicely warmed up to the track, it ends, again prompting the thought of, “Well, that was pointless.”

Which kind of sums up this album anyway. Grand brings nothing fresh to the table here, simply copying better productions from across the field, and failing to offer a unique sound of his own in the process. Serious house-heads aren’t going to have much use for Output, as it clearly wasn’t produced with them in mind. The mainstream crowd may find more worth in it, but only if they don’t listen to much house music to begin with. In that sense, Output may serve as a handy and accessible introduction to the genre at large, in which case I’ll give Grand some credit. After all, he’s made a better album than the fucking Boomtang Boys ever did.


Score: 3/10

ACE TRACKS:
Rockin’ High


Written by Sykonee, 2009. © All rights reserved.