The married Los Angeles couple of Danny and Tiffany Preston get a mention on The Recommender today, after three years of riding the blog buzz, because their debut album, Boys & Diamonds, finally arrived in the last few weeks. We’ve had the chance to go over it and feel that their work is worthy of a few talking points – none more so than their audacious attempt to bridge a seemingly impossible gap.
Rainbow Arabia first appeared on the radar in 2008, with their first work, The Basta EP, followed up in 2009, with the mini-album, Kabukimono. The transition from one EP to the next was palpable, as we watched the married couple evolve their complicated sound over time. Initial inspiration that came from purchasing a Lebonese synthesiser, that was able to produce middle-eastern sounds and beats, dominated their work throughout.
It took another 18 months before we were finally served up the full album, a period of time that’s virtually impossible to maintain any excitement over, which might go some way to explaining the eventual muted reviews. The album, out now on Kompakt FM records, received a score of 4.9/10 from Pitchfork, calling it “kind of awful“, followed by Drowned In Sound’s 6/10, as they mentioned the band’s promise not quite being met. It’s understandable and is a lesson in capitalising on any initial buzz an artist can generate.
Taking the album as a whole it seems somewhat stuck in a battle between the natural and the man-made. Inventing some sort of tribal robot just seems, well, silly. They stretch themselves slightly too far as they try to blend tropical bongos and Bossa Nova rhythms, with electronic pop from the 1980s. The imagery is therefore all over the place, with both ends of the spectrum seeming too far apart for them to try and successfully clash together.
However, it’s worth noting that Rainbow Arabia have created an album that also has undoubtedly beautiful elements mixed within it, with a multitude of layers and some blinding flashes of electro. The entire piece is washed over with mostly-undecipherable vocals that take in the burnt echo of chillwave, with the glacial sparkle of The Knife‘s Karin Dreijer Anderson – with stunning results on occasion. It’s as original as MIA, or as rootsy and Caribbean as Santigold, but due to all this over-exposure it seems to suffer something of a blackout.
So the further lesson here seems to be that they’ve come up against one of this generation’s difficult challenges. We live in the age of the Internet, with the world now literally at our fingertips, allowing us to source information and inspiration from literally anywhere and everywhere. How any new artists find ways to be original, or how they decide from where to take inspiration and how to successfully knit together the multitude of influences, can be a difficult minefield in which to tread. Although there’s lots to enjoy from Rainbow Arabia’s album – and certainly enough for you to investigate – it’s schizophrenic results will no doubt leave you as unsatisfied as they were at it’s mixed reviews. (MB)
RAINBOW ARABIA – WITHOUT YOU
RAINBOW ARABIA – BOYS AND DIAMONDS
RAINBOW ARABIA – HAI
