Exercices des Styles

Artist: Les Gammas
Label: Compost
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: LP Record
Number Of Discs: 2

UPC: 667548003810
EAN: 0667548003810
ASIN: B00004TXSS

Release Date: 2000-06-13

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Tracks:

Whenever
All of Me
Vie des Anges
Love to Be
Homme Mystérieux
Document A [CD Edit]
Don't Waste My Love
Chasin' the Double Six
Afternoon at Rossi's
See the Sun
Samba Para Dr. B.
Love Ultd.
Chiffre

Customer Reviews:

Very Good Album .......2006-02-09

It's funny but when I first picked this up some 5 years ago, it was actually on accident and out of ignorance as I was looking for Les Hommes yet Les Gammas was a familiar name to me. The mistake was honest - I had heard Les Gammas on an early edition of the Break & Bossa series on Schema Records and I'd heard Les Hommes, who is an artist on the Schema label, on a different compilation. But in the end thank heavens I did get this album! Les Gammas are a Compost label artists, which means at the time of this album they were labelmates with Rainer Truby/Truby Trio, A Forest Mighty Black, Beanfield, Michael Reinboth, Jazzanova, Faze Action and loads of others. And, looking at the relationship between Schema and Compost (you'll see artists participate on different works, and even Nicola Conte wrote the linear note for Rainer Truby's Glucklich V) it's easy to make the mistake.

Still, I didn't give the album a fair shot when I first heard it. But over time it definitely grew on me and I appreciated the creativity in the sound. It's loaded with electronic touches and bits of nu-jazz. It's very well done! The CD starts out with "Whenever", a track that changes pace and tempo after a pure Brasil inspired intro. "All of Me" follows up nicely, great instrumentation with a soulful feel. "Love to Be" is nice but they did just a bit of overkill with distorted voiceovers. "L'Homme Mysterieux" has excellent piano work to it and a nice build. "Don't Waste My Love" adds more of an R&B ambiance to the music. Other tunes that I enoyed were "See the Sun" although the vocals took away from the cut IMO. "Samba Para Dr. B" and "Chiffre" were also solid tunes.

I did enjoy this album but not all of the songs got me - sometimes with Les gammas, I think that they used the same sample or line a bit too much... a little redundant. One example was on one of the versions of a song they have titled "Outra Vida". I think it should be noted that probably their biggest ever hit, "Outra Vida", which includes Smoke City's Nina Miranda, is NOT included but in the first version of that song that I heard, "Do you live your life like you believe in" was used ad nausem. I think that track was released after the album but I'm not sure - it might've been included on a Japanese import version of this. But I still did enjoy this album - good samples, nice musicianship and it's a unique piece in my collection. If you like this, you may also like Wei Chi's album, work by Amon Tobin, Tosca, Jazzanova's "In Between" and Minus 8's "Elysian Fields" and "Minuit".

New genre uprising.......2001-02-03

Like Saint-Germain, Les Gammas combine soul, funk and jazz with a drum&bass like sound. They use samples from George Duke amongst others. See the Sun features a voice with the strength of Talk Talk's 'Life's what you make it'. Really worth your while.

Innovative and Entertaining.......2001-02-01

Exercises de Styles is not without tracks that you don't want to listen to, but it has at least 3 songs that you'll want to hear a billion times. All around the album is pretty great. If you're into this type of music, or you have really broad tastes in the Electronic and Lounge genres, buy this album now.

Following in the tradition of Nuyorican Soul, Air, and Jimi Tenor, Les Gammas' Exercises de Styles varies between a study of seemingly trite music styles and ground-breaking genre-bending pop-music like you've never heard before. None of the songs degenerate into kitsch, but fuse lounge sensibility, Latin rhythms, a disco feel, and french-pop melodies, often into an overwhelming and enveloping symphonic sound.

More than just "excercises", the album brings incredible creativity to the styles explored, resulting in something new and unique. The use of electronic instruments to complement (rather than dominate) the acoustic feel creates such subtle sophistication that you melt.

It reminds me so much of Jimi Tenor's album Organism and Nuyorican Soul's single Black Gold of the Sun but at the same time it is entirely something new and different.

Buy this album.

Organica and Electronic Fused with Soul: Exercises in Style.......2000-08-01

Everyone's ears are listening for something different on the first run of a new music purchase. You are probably reading this review to see if I heard something in this CD worth spending hard earned cyber-dollars on. Most of the reviews on amazon are ambiguously favorable, which can leave you like "Damn, does this guy like what I like." So I will say this about this debut from Les Gammas -- I loved it. If you like Jazzanova, 4-hero, Kyoto Jazz Massive, Calm, Silent Poets, Lewis Taylor, Homecookin, and Omar, you will probably dig this. This group is on the label Compost with Rainer Truby, Truby Trio, Kyoto Jazz massive, and Jazzanova (via collaboration on Jazzanova-Compost Records).

The Soul, Drum N' Bass, Dance Jazz, Bossa, and Downtempo genre's are all well represented here; yet, this album defies the myopic boundaries that segregate modern music into sub-genre after sub-genre. Whether your in a chillout mood, driving over the speed limit, reading a book, or sweating on the dance floor, Exercices Des Styles has a groove for any mood. What kind of music is this? Music for the Soul.

Music CD:

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