Ree-Vo – All Welcome on Planet Ree-Vo

By RingMaster Review on August 19, 2022 • ( 0 )

Zeal to explore the debut album from Bristol electro-hop duo REE-VO was firmly provoked by its singles leading up to its highly anticipated release and equally real curiosity grew to see if it could live up to the suggestion and prowess of those self-same tracks. Well, All Welcome on Planet Ree-Vo is invitation in title and character and indeed from its first breath a summons upon ears and imagination which leaves those first songs as just appetisers for its rich and full spread.

Consisting of Andy Spaceland (AKA Andy Jenks) and T. Relly, REE-VO is a project bred of a city’s musical scene which is renowned for adventure, uniqueness and bold almost schizophrenic invention. Their sound is as hip hop/trip hop kilned as funk and electronic dub inclined with plenty of other flavours in its character and enterprise, this wrapping lyrical insight and observation socially and politically nurtured with intimacy and mischievous fun just as keenly embraced. The likes of YOUNG FATHERS, MASSIVE ATTACK, THE BUG, TRICKY and others are suggested as hints to the duo’s sound and we would add at times the album brought thoughts of nineties British trip/hip hoppers HONKY to mind but REE-VO only offer the individual and unique.

The declaration of an opening sample and invitation quickly led to ears being hooked and entwined in the pulsating shuffle of We Go. The track is a web like dance of sound and enterprise, ears quickly entangled in its threads and vocal quickstep with the pulse of sound and repetition lure and warning alike to the realm of REE-VO.

Boom just as quickly gripped attention; that HONKY thought soon in play as the song saunters in on warm melodic breaths around the pair’s vocal shuffle. As the first track, the song is insatiably catchy and just as eagerly manipulating our involvement in voice and movement to its funky sway before Groove With It filled the air with immediate drama and dilemma. Every controlled swing of notes and lyrical trespass is ripped with intrigue and accusation, the theatre of sound and imagination equally gripped by danger kissed suggestion.

The track is superb and soon matched in stature and addiction by Spacebox, a track shaped upon a canvas of instinctive manipulation and built layer by layer in a predacious virulence of craft and temptation. Every second is an orchestration of one’s body and throat, a dancefloor driving flirtation with, as all songs, a breath of word and thought which is almost damning in opinion of the world, though here more a trespass on getting bodies moving.

Both Combat and Nu gripped just as forcibly, the first an invasive fizz of techno and electronic incitement beneath thought and vocal dissidence while the second is a dark and knowing contemplation of sound and voice with a touch of AUSTERITY to it. In turn both songs burrowed deep, the second especially compelling and entangling as too successor End Of The World. It too has a shadowed air to its presence and trespass to its intent yet with the glow of soulful pop virulence within, an inescapable melodic catchiness to its chorus bringing a hue of THE MOOD with it.

Strange Noise presents an almost disorientating sphere of sound and adventure, every moment a claustrophobic but inviting embrace of enterprise and intimation around equally engaging and provocative vocal contemplation; both aspects as prevalent within next up Protein. The song is an eye balling slice of defiance and pugilist shaped sound which had us stalking the floor in movement as boldly as it hunted the senses and imagination in craft.

Completed by Dirty Secret and its own unique allegation and assertion of thought and sound, condemnation and otherworldly creativity shaping another striking moment of so many within the release, All Welcome on Planet Ree-Vo proved one glorious adventure for ears and the imagination.

Those earlier tracks suggested something special to come courtesy of Ree-Vo but the duo has simply bypassed their promise to provide something even richer, bolder and greedily irresistible.

All Welcome on Planet Ree-Vo is out now via Dell’Orso Records / SRD; available @ https://ree-vo1.bandcamp.com/