Through their prolific remix work in the last decade, Erol Alkan and Richard Norris have brought psychedelic music to the dance floor. The band name they chose, Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve, along with the album cover depicting a traditional band set up alongside older studio equipment, gives a strong indication of what their first album of original material will sound like. ‘The Soft Bounce’ starts with hypnotic reverb-soaked vocals and music quietly building on the brilliant ‘Delicious’. ‘Iron Age’ brings the listener back to the ‘70s, whilst including ideas from the present, with its churning Hawkwind riffs, big heavy metal choruses and subtle dance floor beats. Dreamy female vocals fill every transcendent second of ‘Creation’. ‘Black Crow’, with its electronic drum rolls, stunning vocals and mesmerising chorus, is a dark orchestrated pop masterpiece: “As my bones break away, all the dust is here to stay...Black Crow, you’re the only to know”.
‘Tomorrow, Fever’ is a gentle, dreamy interlude, and it signals the start of the mostly instrumental second half. Female vocals glide gracefully in and out of the title track, echoing the guitar and vocal sound The Cure used on their masterpiece ‘Disintegration’. The closing track ‘Third Mynd’ opens with a mysterious narrator speaking: “I began to turn into myself, to loop through my own flesh…the glory and terror of it all”. As he lets his story unfold over the developing music, it’s a fitting end to ‘The Soft Bounce’, with its song orientated first half and psychedelic second half.
The Fat Angel Sings 