Bell: Seven Types of Six
Soul Jazz Records

Apparently Seven Types of Six was four years in the making but frankly, judging from the musical results, it's hard to understand why it took so long. This second album from Bell (D. Crouch and A. Stephens) is cool, robotic electro-house that rarely breaks a sweat. Minimal, clean, and clear, it's competently executed and tastefully crafted but also too staid and unexciting and, furthermore, there's little here that hasn't been heard already elsewhere. “File One” opens the album promisingly enough, with voice cut-ups (“It's time to get funky”) added to a funky electro-house beat and warped synth effects, but even here there's a modicum of passion with the intensity level never rising above polite. Likewise, “2 Voices” and “Mazar” are credible enough but lack unusual qualities to distinguish them, and in “Slide Out Wide” the beats seem downright lethargic.

Certainly there are some nice moments: “RIST 11A4” includes some distinctive electric bass flanges, and the arcade-style and deep synths in “N” give it an unusual techno-funk sound, and—surprise!—there's even some noisy business at the song's end. Even better are “Winning Signal” and “Black Helicopters” as both teem with restless activity, the former vocodered electro-techno and the latter distinguished by pinprick beats, fluttering synth melodies, and rubbery synths. The huge machine-funk rhythms in “Kathy” also impress, although the phone conversation idea seems tame in 2004, having been done more strikingly by Kraftwerk in “The Telephone Call” some eighteen years ago. The legendary Düsseldorfers seems to be referenced outright on the robotic “Rhythm Machine” which borrows the vocodered speech effect from “Computer World,” but quoting Kraftwerk here is a risky move as it merely accentuates the difference between the truly visionary and the pleasantly workmanlike.

October 2004