ELEVATOR SUITE Backaround (Infectious)
ELEVATOR SUITE Barefoot & Shitfaced - 5 Track Album Sampler (Infectious)
Minimal background arrived with these - Elevator Suite's second single and a sampler from their imminent debut album - aside from the information that "their debut single "Man In A Towel" was warmly received by Radio One and became a Zoe Ball Record Of The Week, as well as being C listed there. The band have recently been DJing at various hip London locations, most notably the Heavenly Social Bar and will be gracing the decks of the Rizla Caf at Glastonbury on the Sunday night". A reel of right places, people and times, undoubtedly, so why is it that I find it so hard to get to grips with the music of Elevator Suite?
At a guess, these CDs are intended to function as soundtrack music for people craving the whole Club 18-30 Ibizan experience but who can't take the inevitable dance culture that accompanies it. For them, Elevator Suite are happy to play Proper Music, with words and melodies and stuff. Titles like "Weekend Wonderboy" and pictures of bikini-clad women on yachts would seem to reinforce this. But as far as the music of Elevator Suite goes, it's unrewarding stuff, all glossy surface and expensively produced identikit 'alternative' pop, the kind of thing that's forever destined to sink to the end-of-CD2 dregs of "Shine" compilations along with the infernal Symposium. No fire in its belly, no heart on its sleeve, or anywhere else for that matter.