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XX
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| List Price: | £13.99 |
| Price: | £7.98 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery. Details |
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk
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Average customer review:
Track Listing
- Intro
- VCR
- Crystalised
- Islands
- Heart Skipped A Beat
- Fantasy
- Shelter
- Basic Space
- Infinity
- Night Time
- Stars
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #41 in Music
- Released on: 2009-08-17
- Number of discs: 1
- Dimensions: .19 pounds
Editorial Reviews
CD Description
The eponymous debut album from South London four piece the XX, draws influence from Young Marble Giants, Cocteau Twins and a hint of electronica and R&B. With these influences, the group craft delicate, melancholic, minimalist pop songs. Tender and seductive, this album is simply delightful. Includes the singles 'Basic Space' and 'Crystalised'.
Customer Reviews
Seriously Good
Scatty and Gritz (the cubs) brought this one home
from school and have been playing nothing else over
the past week. They've dumped their hoodies (it was
red bandanas before that!) and reverted to basic black.
They also seem to be reading Schopenhauer again
- their Mother's influence not mine I hasten to add.
I seem to have found something to like in this music too.
The xx are a somewhat po-faced but very talented
little combo from South London. This debut collection
of 11 compositions is relentlessly and uncompromisingly
single-minded in its sustained intensity.
It's hard to imagine them sitting around together
drinking cider and watching Father Ted re-runs.
This is much more Jacques Brel and absinthe territory !
Seriousness becomes them.
The combined vocal contributions of Ms Croft and
Mr Sim create a charmingly laconic ambience.
There is a total absence of frenzy. In fact nothing
much happens throughout in the nicest possible way.
'Infinity' is a splendid composition. The closest
thing to a climax in the entire project.
The spirit of Hank Marvin might well be smiling in the wings.
'Night Time' is a marvelously morose little ditty
and for my money its starkly economical, pared-down,
minimalism is the album's gloomy highlight.
Jamie Smith's beats and Baria Qureshi's well-judged
keyboard interventions are entirely complementary to
the centrally positioned Croft/Sim double-act.
Concluding track 'Stars' made me remember acutely
what it was like to be young and intense and delirious
with dark and serious dreams.
Recommended.
Kind of like a pared down Lamb?
I've been listening this album since Rob da Bank kept banging on about how good they were. They're definitely one of the more alluring sounds I've heard in 2009 - kind of like a stripped back Lamb with a bit of Hot Chip in there, maybe a smidge of Bat for Lashes too? All quite minimal, breathless, lingering - its low-fi, shoe-gaze music, appropriate for sultry late night liaisons.
Buy it!
Sublime first album from this London quartet, an atmospheric and chilled out journey through their own Bassy yet melodic world. This self produced album is very much their own, picking up influences from plenty of genres including trip-hop, R&B, and Dubstep but always keeping it original, with beautiful interplay between the male/female lead vocals. Emerging from the same south London comprehensive as the likes of Four tet, Burial, hot chip and the Maccabees, The XX are none of these, while often reflecting some of the best bits of them all.
A breath of fresh air...
