A Grand Love Story

Released

The first album from French producer, DJ and electronic musician Jean Yves Prieur is a charming collection of dense, fuzzy, trip hop and electronic sample-based tracks that occasionally tip over into gentle folkish, lounge and easy listening territory in a most agreeable fashion. Prieur’s take on the trip hop template included the requisite sluggish tempos, crusty drum breaks and sleepy, slightly narcotic mood, but he dispensed with its smoked-out paranoia, revelling instead in a cheery, sunny disposition. The ghosts of pop, lounge and acoustic folk are contained here, and although it’s sometimes difficult to discern the original flavour of the overlapping sampled parts he’s assembled, there’s a soft and familiar easy-listening musicality to the whole album. Not all trip hop is calming or soporific because it’s stoner music, some of it, like A Grand Love Story, is calming and soporific because of its lullaby qualities: there’s a warm heart at the centre of this album.

Harold Heath

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