Level 42 In A Peaceful World
Andre S. Grindle | Brewer Maine | 08/25/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"It's hard not to think of the mid 90's music scene and not get a little mixed up. There was trance over here,high NRG over here,new jack swing over here and each seemed to be on these different,crazy collision courses. During the 80's Level 42 were one of the most durable and frankly consistant bands of the era,always based in it's jazz-funk roots but adding dashes of pop and even disco along the way. When their 90's debut Guaranteed came out.....things hadn't changed for them. A few years later when Level 42 went back into the studio to record their second album of the decade they decided that,for the first time since the mid 80's to mix it up a bit with some modern elements such as the fuzzy,droning hip-hop beats that pretty much dominated 90's funk as well as some elements of disco revival. But just because they changed their beats doesn't mean they changed their entire approch. Mark King's bass brilliance and Mike Lindup melodic keyboards still hold down the fort.Lyrically there is an interesting tendency here to speak a great deal of the transendant;"Past Lives" with it's quirky grooves actually deals with reincarnation wheras the likeminded "The Bends" even references Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.On "Don't Bother Me" there is some overdo cultural reference to the bands salad days referring to someone "spending the 80's in a trance" and having "led us all on a merry dance". There's still plenty of the bands breezy,humane'lovestruck and poetic mood to go around as "Romance,"Time Will Heal" and "The Sunbed Song" all reveal."Learn To Say No" was a a huge hit off the album and it's no wonder because it has the most strong resemblance to the bands classic sound. One interesting quality here is how much the band draw musically here from 70's R&B/funk. Yes it was the genre that inspired them in the first place but they were never a retro band. Despite the contemporary leanings, between Mike's heavy use of the fender rhodes and horns on a lot of songs this is definately the closest Level 42 ever came to 70's funk-soul revival. At the same time their own sound always came first. Even though it has fanfaring horns and this urban flavor the title song,also a hit maintains the magical musical quality that has sustained Level 42 over the years. Another "hit" song is "Love In A Peaceful World",which sums up perfectly the cultural atmospherics of the period-a need for carefree romance in a world based on paranoia and revisionist history. The album actually opens up with one of it's odder songs "Billy's Gone",a rather dark and mournful song that recalls some of Level 42's earlier instrumental pieces like "Dune Tune" only with that modern fuzzy beat. This album was originally released in 1994 but a couple years later was reissued with a different track listing.For some reason two excellent songs were removed and are on the second CD of this set. One is "Tired Of Waiting",a classic Level 42 jam in every sense of the word. "All Over You",also uptempo is a more "contempo" club track,at least as far as Level 42 could get at that time. In fact four of the remixes that fill out the second disk of this set are remixes of that song that are even more clubby. Ditto for the rest of the remixes here,save for two true-to-the-original mixes of "Love In A Peaceful World". During a time when generic sounds were accepted and even critically acclaimed during this era of pop music Level 42 were still remaining very true to themselves. And even if they weren't releasing albums at all consistantly during this time it was nice to hear them keeping true to the context of their own musical vision."
