Duosseudo - We Are One (Album)
In the interests of journalistic objectivity, I should probably begin this review with quite a sweeping caveat – your humble scribe is not the biggest fan of dance music. Sure, there have been exceptions. Sonic Animation’s Orchid for the Afterworld was great and acts like Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers, Basment Jaxx and even Fatboy Slim (at a pinch) have all left their indelible mark on my musical psyche. But overall, when it comes to dance music, I just can’t help recall those immortal words of TISM in their classic The Last Australian Guitar Hero– everything is all machines run with MIDI and A-DAT/But all they do is go ping ping ping like a truck that’s backing back...
But, I digress.
We Are One is the debut album from Melbourne producers Marc Edwards and Luc Wiesman who make up Duosseudo (I mean, I get that they’re a duo but are they a pseudo duo who can’t spell or a duo who are really into suede but are dyslexic?).
The sound reminded me very much of the Gold Coast – big, bold, and ostentatious, but with ultimately little substance.
From the albums opener, a self indulgent little introduction called Together; We Are One struggles to get out of first gear. This is probably due to the fact that Messrs. Edwards and Wiesman have eschewed the need for dynamics for a rather interesting tact of repeating a single riff over and over for the duration of the song –evidenced particularly on the album’s title track.
The rest of the album pretty much plods along at the same pace with a slight reprieve coming in the form of a remix of Gotye’s Hearts a Mess and a guest appearance from Melbourne soulstress Paris Wells on the track Girls Line Up.
Armed with less than a dilatant’s knowledge of the genre, your humble scribe can still say, with a certain degree of confidence that We Are One is not going to be breaking any new ground on the dance floor anytime soon.
