Subsonar - Cool Accident (CD 2008)

I'm quite surprised this is the first 'solo' album by Dreadzone co-founder and very talented musician Tim Bran; his absence from Dreadzone has indeed been noticed in recent years, especially on the very disappointing 'Once Upon A Time'. Fresh from collaborating with Dr LX Patterson on the Orb's latest album 'The Dream' (in my opinion the best Orb album for donkey's years), comes this CD.

My initial impression was that this is very Dreadzone-like in some places and very Orb-like in others and I wasn't immediately impressed, thinking I've heard this all before. Very catchy, dub baselines, good rhythms, samples, laid back instrumentation, nice vocals and all produced very well (I think Youth had some input), but was there anything new?

After a few listens the feel and depth of the album comes through and you realise that this CD is more than the sum of it's parts. As mentioned above, you realise it's Tim's input into the Orb's 'The Dream' that makes it such a good CD, bringing focus and great basslines back to the Orb's sound. The fact that the first few songs on this sound like 'Biological Radio' era Dreadzone is what initially threw me I think, but after these couple of tracks things become a lot more interesting.

I won't go through track-by-track, but the variation on styles on offer here is surprisingly wide, but more importantly it still retains a 'sound' and cohesion overall. 'Indian Summer' is slightly menacing with Portishead-like vocals, 'Cool Accident' is positively uplifting, 'Ultrasound' glides along nicely and 'Transmissions' is very 'Dead Cities' era FSOL.

Things finish with a couple of laid-back tracks, obviously Alex Patterson's influence rubbing off in return! It's one of those CD's, that if you don't listen to it for a couple of weeks and then put it back on you realise how much it's grown on you and how damn good it actually is. I expect many years of happy listening and finding new things in this album.