Album Review: Troubleman - Time Out Of Mind (Far Out)

Writer: Oliver Scott

Conventional wisdom had it, back when any record shop worth its salt had a row of listening booths like old fashioned telephone boxes, that punters would test out their LPs in a certain way before buying them. They'd listen to the first few songs on Side 1, and then flip it over and repeat the process on Side 2. So, while it made sense to kick off the album with your best songs, it also paid to begin the second side with a killer too. You'd hide the fillers towards the end, naturally.

I was reminded of this after our saintly Editor [yeah, right! - Ed.] gave me the much anticipated Troubleman album, Time Out Of Mind. Part of Far Out's 10th celebration (read the interview with Far Out guv'nor Joe Davis elsewhere on Know the Ledge), it is the first full album recorded under that name by Mark Pritchard, he of many monikers, deep breath: Reload, Global Communication, Jedi Knights and Link. And the reason I remembered this? Because this is a rare case of a record that gets better and better as it goes on, leaving to my mind, all the best songs to the end of the album. So, I'm going to write about it backwards.

Neatly, Zap, featuring Nina Miranda of Smoke City and Da Lata, is a lovely and clever tape-playing-backwards number, while Strikehard – released a couple of years back – remains a wicked chunky Afro-funk-house stomper. Without You, third from the end, and featuring the vocals of Steve Spacek, is proper 21st Century soul music that demonstrates Prichard's ability to actually tackle a 'song' as opposed to beat-making. It's one of the finest musical moments of 2004 and I reckon we're having a good year too.

The title track, Time Out of Mind, is lively techno with a twist, and while we all know how good Eska Mtungwazi is from her work with NSM, Ty and others, on Roll On she proves easily the equal of the American soul singers we get so excited about. Again, this is proper song writing. Great keyboards from Richard Dunn here, and bass from Pino Paladino, a man with a fine musical heritage himself. Nina Miranda pops up again on Toda Hora which probably sounds better in a club than at home - something that is definitely true of Change Is What We Need with its Axelrodesque vocals; I'm speaking from experience here.

However, the first five songs on the album fall a little too easily into bossa-lite or modern beats and breaks style cliches for my liking - and not just because I'm writing this in the middle of some nasty July storms in Londontown. Lonely Girl is quite pretty but inconsequential; The Righteous Path might echo Axelrod again (his influence is looming large right now, and rightly so) but it's a tad dull; Paz covers the same sort of territory which has made Bebel Gilberto a wealthly woman; and the opening song Have A Good Time is well put together but not doing much for me.

Despite all this, Time Out of Mind remains a fantastic, genre-defying album, and if you’re buying it on vinyl, it’ll be quite easy to just leave the first record in the sleeve and hammer the second one.

RELATED LINKS:
Far Out - Troubleman's label official web site



Buy Troubleman's Time Out Of Mind album at Amazon UK (CD / Vinyl) | US (CD).




PUBLISHED: 31 July 2004

RELEASE DATE: 12 July 2004 (UK) | 14 June 2004 (US)

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