Bad Timing [2010]
Mole Listening Pearls
mole095-2
If Audio Lotion's new album were the soundtrack for a crime, then the latter would have been committed out of love and passion in self-defense: our hero was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, too often - well, "Bad Timing" – and he knows too much... Mr. Gamma is on the run, in a silver-grey Jaguar XKR, racing along the Côte d'Azur from Nice via Eze sur Mer towards Monaco. At the wheel there’s a cross between Jason Bourne, 007, and Ethan Hunt, betrayed by friends and foes, hunted by his past. Escape, start anew somewhere, or face his pursuers and wipe them out? In a speedboat across the rough Mediterranean Sea to Algier. There, those dogs almost get him! Through the deadly Sahara into the orient. Waingro, an old contact in Beirut, provides him with the necessary gadgets. The chase continues with 140 BPM! Run, hide, or die!
Such scenes are being conjured up before the mind’s eye when hearing the album. But Audio Lotion add a good measure of irony to their play with the spy movie genre. The title "Bad Timing“ and the visual design of the album showing the spy who didn’t „come in from the cold“, but „tripped at the most unfortunate moment“, already suggest that there’s not always an invincible hero à la James Bond behind the wheel, but sometimes a Maxwell Smart or an Inspector Clouseau. One is reminded of a likeable, but slightly awkward, protagonist who, at the decisive moment, lacks the necessary quantum of luck – and, well, timing. Every once in a while, the music picks up that theme, too, and produces a rhythmical hiccup, an odd melody or a not completely serious bit of movie dialogue. And although all this is served with the necessary touch of ‚amusement’, deep inside, one never really doubts that the hero of the stories the album tells is the coolest guy in the business.
For more than ten years, Audio Lotion have been inspiring the press to storms of superlatives: „The perfect lounge sound“, „Music that belongs to the daily needs like eating and drinking“, „Absolutely necessary for heart and ears“, „Refreshing“, „Pleasant“, „Relaxing“, „Sensual“, and „Sexy“. And as the icing on the cake, Audio Lotion’s music found its way into the queen of lifestyle TV series: Sex and the City.
However, their fifth album "Bad Timing" deserved even more superlatives: the duo from Zurich puts into motion a one-hour power plant of feelings. A musical thriller that sends a neuronal firework from the brain stem into the cortex and produces fantastic images and stories. "Bad Timing“ is eustress with its most positive (scientifically proven) effects on body and soul. The album motivates and stimulates.
The biggest compliment for Audio Lotions' new album could be described as "inspiration". "Bad Timing“ has the potential for a masterpiece, the potential for inspiring and influencing other artists in their work. The energy of a piece of art creates new energy for new works of art. Be it design, painting, sculptures, literature, music or film. Not only artists in a creative crisis should free up front row space for Audio Lotion’s "Bad Timing" in their first-aid CD shelf.
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