(Creative Vibes)

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, erm actually it’s just a bird. To be more specific, The Bird, a Sydney-based beats and grooves ensemble well known to festival punters and live dance enthusiasts around the country. Hot on the heels of last year’s excellent ‘The Sound Of No Sound’, comes their third release, ‘Audible Inventions’.

Formed around the nucleus of Simon Durrington (keyboards) and Ben Walsh (drums), The Bird have brought in a handful of other players for the new album. Regular live guest, Dave Atkins, of Resin Dogs fame, was drafted in for production duties. His increased use of breaks, beats, loops and samples is probably the clearest difference from previous albums. Bobby Singh (tabla) who has just returned to India also contributed a remix of the dancehall/broken beat collision ‘Zindagi’. At times, they seem to rely a little too much on their unstoppably talented drummer in the live environment, so it’s interesting to see them beginning to investigate other techniques of drum programming as well as generally producing the tracks. The highlight for me is the dubstep funk of ‘Zindagi’, which could have easily arrived in a Tempa sleeve.

I find Audible Inventions quite intriguing. It takes elements of dancehall, breakbeat, bits of the UK’s emerging broken beat scene and produces an album that’s an excellent genre piece, but at times a little lacking in personality. Use of fairly clichéd BBC-style spoken word samples is another drawback – considering that Coldcut owned that sound five to ten years ago, the sampling here seems a little played out.

Despite a few misgivings, Audible Inventions is an accomplished record that stops in on mellow dubbed-out breakbeat, broken beat and soul. It’s great to see breakbeat coming out of Australian hands which sidesteps the generic new school sound, for a more soulful and moody groove. Vinyl junkies should keep an eye out for a 12” release early next year featuring club-friendly tracks from all three albums.