Laroca – Valley of The Bears

In this day and age record companies seem quite happy to resort to any kind of bizarre promotional tactic in order to secure a sale. Having spent a good while with this album now, I’d suggest that giving away a free coffee table with each CD might well garner a fair bit of interest. Laroca’s Valley of The Bears is right up there with the rest of those releases vying for the coffee-table, background-music set and no mistake.It’s quite often a shame when such a thing happens because all too frequently those kinds of records are dismissed as being middle-class fondue fodder and are rarely heard at anything above a barely audible level. Portishead’s debut managed it by being somewhat amazing, but for some of us the likes of Royksopp and Zero 7 are forever tarred with the middle of the road brush.Such a fate may yet await Laroca, and there will be many who will rush to write this off as elevator music, but hold your horses people because this is an album that is well worth exploring, and deserves to be heard properly.Laroca are adept jumpers of genre divides, mixing electronica with a diverse range of world music influences. You may not find any Norwegian Black Metal hidden in the grooves but there’s plenty of flavour coming from Japan, France, South America, the Arab Nations and naturally there are some tinges of 1970’s American cop shows too.Things get off to a peculiar start with 'Brassic' which eases you into the Valley of The Bears with a solemn funereal march that sounds as if it may have been more than appropriate listening at Zorba the Greek’s wake. A few nifty little drum fills and we’re rolling. 'La Glorieta' follows next with a peculiar high pitched scat vocal scampering over a funked up mix of orchestral breakbeat tango. It will surely appear on at least three adverts by the end of the year.'Elevator Tester' is a chilled out trance tune that does exactly what you’d expect a chilled out trance tune to do and does it very well indeed, thank you very much. The French Hip-Hop of 'Carpe Diem' is probably left to one side, but Laroca quickly redeem themselves with a slinky Mexican tinged jazz number that has its roots in cinematic grandeur. The funk of 'Unit 125' also lends itself to cinematic visions, although by this time Laroca are exploring the world of Blaxploitation. It’s infused with a swagger that is infectious and it has an effortless jazz cool that could have you thinking that a wide brim hat might be quite a wise investment by the time its three and a half minutes have come to an end.There will be snobs who dismiss this album as muzak, but that’s their problem. Valley of The Bears is a real grower, with a depth that can only be discovered if you’re willing to invest a little time in it. It may well become the coffee table album of the year, but for once this is an album that you should not regard with the kind of distain usually reserved for a coaster. 65%Laroca on MySpace[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6nVqYHgQvk[/youtube]