Bot'Ox - Babylon by Car

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  • Dark, moody, driving, and professional, Cosmo Vitelli and Julien Briffaz's full-length debut together as Bot'Ox is the kind you can play a lot, notice, even enjoy, but not quite remember when it's over. It's not that Babylon by Car is actively bad or anything; in fact, the album's streamlined quality may be what works against it. Its lack of ridges allows it to slip right by without giving the listener much toehold. Babylon's arrangements are patient and well chosen. That's evident right off: "Motor City" builds itself up one piece at a time: soft percussion loop, keyboards, handclaps, FX, added one at a time to fairly hypnotic effect. There's a swaggering looseness about the drums of "Bearded Lady Motorcycle Club" that seem to sum up Bot'Ox's ideals as well as anything here: sleek and chic but still breathable. That track also shows the album's limits, though: The whiny/buzzy guitar riff, satiny cello, and grinding bass groove, repeating without much variation, suggests soundtrack music in the programmatic rather than cinematic sense. Speaking of the movies, the baldly titled "Overdrive" is the one that sounds like a John Carpenter soundtrack—apparently everyone needs a track like that now, and this one's pretty good (though they might have gone even further and called it "Maximum Overdrive," after Stephen King's directorial debut). In a softer way, the slow spiraling synth lines of "Rue de l'Arsenal" suggest a pre-climactic montage, while the flickering guitar-drum tandem of "Crashed Cadillac" bring to mind a tense opening credits sequence, especially after the menacing muted trumpet and ether-breathing effects come in. The vocalists on Babylon are used pretty well. On "Blue Steel," Anna Jean's Nico-foggy croon turns the song from fuzzy videogame glitch-percussion loop to 8-bit balladry that could almost be on Asthmatic Kitty. Post-punk icon Judy Nylon gives the cold throb and warm synth line of "Tout Passe, Tout Lasse, Tout Casse" some extra humanity, as she murmurs, "Don't worry, baby," before and after a breakdown deflates the track like a balloon. Mark "Bogus" Kerr's lizard-like whisper fits right in with the album's final two tracks, the slinky "Tragedy Symphony" and the lullaby-like "Slow Burn." They're pretty, and then they're over, kind of like the album itself.
  • Tracklist
      01. Motor City 02. Bearded lady Motorcycle Club 03. Blue Steel feat. Anna Jean 04. Crashed Cadillac 05. Tout Passe, Tout Lasse, Tout Casse feat. Judy Nylon 06. Babylon By Car 07. Rue de l’Arsenal 08. Car Jacked 09. Tragedy Symphony feat. Mark "Bogus" Kerr 10. Slow Burn feat. Mark "Bogus" Kerr
RA