felt - train above the city

felt's spirited "frasier jazz" (must see tv jazz) detour, with lawrence only appearing as a music director and title writer. maddening for the group's more killjoy type fans, this is an album of lively and dreamy mid century lounge music that you could put on in the vicinity of say, cal tjader in your skyline bar. beyond it being redolent of these scenes in its own right, there is some added heaviness in where it stands in felt's discography/trajectory, almost as if the camera is zooming out to reveal the modern landscape where lawrence's melodramas are taking place. it's also the kind of record i assume to have a cult following in japan, where the skyline lounge seems popular, but i'm not sure that's actually true here.

as an aside, i was once asked to be the dj for a small show of experimental musicians, and i decided that i would just play this album in between acts, because it does work as a kind of interlude music. before one of them i turned the mixer all the way down and for some reason didn't stop the record, i guess i was in a rush and assumed the mixer had a total kill, but it didn't and the first 10 minutes of the set had very subtle lounge music playing underneath it, which i thought was a very interesting choice until i realized. good music for the lazy between acts show dj!





label: cherry red - flt188
condition: vg+/vg+