Calibre - Shelf Life vol. 2

I’m not really sure what to make of Calibre’s Shelf Life vol. 2. When I first heard Confidential by High Contrast, or Ghetto Blaster by Cyantific, I wanted to listen to them over and over again. Both those CDs had great tunes which would get stuck in your head for days. Whilst I would say I enjoyed listening to Calibre’s album, afterwards I had no real desire to listen to it again, and I think that’s a real problem.

The opener Out Of The Box opens with a synth line similar to Twin Peaks, and a nice piano chorus, and threatens to be exciting, but once the track settles down into the rhythm it never explores it’s potential. Harbringer is a deeper track, never as dark as its name suggests, but one of the better DnB tracks on here. Life and The Blues are nice rollers, and probably the most enjoyable after Lazy Rock, a throw back to the oldschool sounds of jazzy dnb.

Calibre does try and mix things up a little, shifting the focus away from DnBnow and then. Harry is almost dubstep, or glitchhop, or whatever silly term you want to use for dance music which doesn’t have a usual time signature, but it’s repetitive even for this style of music. Nightlight moves into a more techno-ish area, and on first listen is fine in amongst the DnB beats, but unfortunately grows rather pedestrian and unmemorable over time. However, NoWhereToBeFound featuring Lariman is another non-DnBtrack, this time being rather minimal, and still enjoyable.

I don’t want to give the idea I don’t like this music – I like good music regardless of its genre. For example, Baobinga & ID’s Big Monster had similar sounding techno tunes (or what ever genre it’s called) and it was easily one of my favourites of last year. But Shelf Life vol. 2 doesn’t have that special something to make it a remarkable album.

Individually the tracks are fine. It’s not that any thing here is unlikable, nor too dissimilar from the laidback or “liquid” drum and bass that’s been around for the last few years, and maybe that’s the problem. But for two CDs worth of music to remain largely unmemorable it’s quite the shame.

There’s a degree of predictability across the whole album. I guess it’s kind of like being married – I was hoping for some dirty on the top of the kitchen counter sex which left me begging for more, but instead we have dependable, safe, and predictable missionary position sex. There’s just nothing exciting going on here.