Review: Little Dragon’s Ritual Union
The Swedish electronic band are like 4 best-friends hanging out in their little apartment, each one with their varying taste in music, decided to make a band and became fucking awesome in it. The forming the band part was in 1996, the becoming awesome part is in the present.
And who could doubt the heavyweight of Little Dragon’s distinctive melodious synthpop with their third studio album Ritual Union. Fronted by the genetically indie vocals of Swedish-Japanese Yukimi Nagano, their album’s title track opener (embedded below) kicks starts and forewarns the listener’s magical journey into a soundscape of minimalist beats, a countryside of acoustica, an outback of trip-hop, and downtempo mayhem.
Little Dragon grew out from the dungeons of trial and error with their high-acclaimed double A-side single “Twice/Test” in 2007. And the metamorphosing of that success and two albums later have given them a sonic collection of organically composed ditties. I guess it does help that Yukimi together with drummer Erik Bodin, Fredrick Kallgren on bass and HÂkan Wirenstrand on keyboards are really best-friends since high school.
The band at its Ritual Union era is as stripped down as they could ever get. They don’t try too hard to stand out with their sound, but in this respect has made it outstanding. It is really through the band’s collaborative effort in doing less and letting Yukimi’s captivating vocals do more that has made Ritual an easy listening head-bobber of an album.
With tunes like “Little Man” (video above), the band showcases a fuss-less construct of their composition. Interjecting dreamy instrumentation and keyboard licks are recognizably littered all over the 11-track album.
It is not surprising that Dragon’s minimal and soft approach towards their composition have given them a lot of room to explore. While they maintained a constant stance towards their less-means-more creations, there are elements of RnB in “Brush The Heat”, hints of Britpop in “Shuffle a Dream”, and while “Crystalfilm” showcases Yukimi’s soulful instances, “Precious” goes minimal dubstep.
My favorite goes to “Summertearz” (embedded above) simply because it showcases the quirky percussive elements of rumba, bellowing below Yukimi’s impeccable and soulful resonance, and unassumingly drops tinge of reggae while packaged in electronica. It is every bi-polar’s aural wet dream come true.
