Release Date: July 8, 2009
Track Listing
- Ms. Beauty
- Tell Me About You
- The Message
- Fate
- Groundscape
- Sandy Plain ~reproduction~
- Where The Future’s Coming From
- Kioku wa Yume no Subete
- Sakura
- Mizu no Wakusei
Review
Be The Voice are Junko Wada (Vocals/Composition/Programming) and Shunji Suzuki (Guitar/Programming/Vocals/Composition/Mix). Their sound is acoustic based but there are also traces of electronic and urban music influences in their music as well. Groundscape is their 6th album.
I became aware of this group through Pengie of unchained. I was chatting with her one day & she mentioned that I may dig this groups sound. I respect Pengie’s recommendations so I asked her to send me a couple of Be The Voice’s albums. I received their 3rd album Epochs and more recently their latest release Groundscape.
Having no idea who Be The Voice were before listening to this I pretty much went in blind. I did happen to see one of their music videos (thanks much Pengie) but other than that… Yeah, blind listening.
After sitting through the entire album I left very impressed. This is one talented duo. A lot of what I heard was similar to other groups that I listen to such as Clazziquai and Jill-Decoy Association. I’m kind of sad that I didn’t hear about them earlier but better late than never right?
Junko’s vocals are quite nice. She has a jazzy/R&B type of singing voice which compliments the laid back groove that majority of the songs on this album have. Shunji’s are nice as well, his is voice is smooth & it blends well with Junko’s when any harmonies kick in.
With albums such as this it’s difficult to pick out and stand-out songs since the entire thing is quality track after quality track. (A rarity these days).
But if I had to choose I would go with Tell Me About You, The Message, Where The Future’s Coming From, Sakura and Mizu no Wakusei. Tell Me About You & The Message are sweet mid-tempo tracks with a bit of an R&B influence.
Where The Future’s Coming From has more of light Latin influence and gives off a summery kind of vibe. Of those tracks I would pick Sakura to be the best out of the group. It’s a simple guitar driven ballad where the both Junko and Shunji trade off the English and Japanese verses. Really soothing stuff.
I was surprised at how incredibly solid this album was & I think I’ll probably put the entire thing on my iPod immediately (which is even more rare). So thanks to Pengie for recommending this to me & I too also highly recommend this to all of you out there.
