Worthy Of A Bigger Audience: Music: Strange Weekend by Porcelain Raft

Strange Weekend: An atmospheric album filled with ideas.

Strange Weekend by Porcelain Raft.

There are some albums where the success of the album is down to the pure and simple brilliance of the songs. Then there are other albums where the overall creative soundscape is what gives them their inventive genius and makes them stand out from the crowd.

Strange Weekend by Porcelain Raft is an album which has a foot in both camps. It’s without doubt a very creative collection of music and a refreshingly interesting album to listen to, but whereas with some artistic albums the soundscape covers up for the lack of quality songs, this is far from being the case with Strange Weekend. Strip away the cool dreamy production and you’re still left with a collection of excellent songs.

Listening to Strange Weekend conjures up words such as floaty, dreamlike or even hypnotic and in fact the names of some of the songs such as Drifting In And Out and Put Me To Sleep suggest that Mauro Remiddi was in that chilled out state of mind when putting lyrics to his musical creations.

Throughout the album you’ll find lyrics which seem to capture the perfect vibe of each song. For example, take away the lyrics to If You Have A Wish and it would still be very aptly named as that’s exactly the sort of imagery the music conjures up.

At certain moments Strange Weekend has a hint of a ‘Chemical Brothers / Beth Orton’ vibe to it similar to the collaborations on early Chemical Brothers albums, notably with the aforementioned If You Have A Wish and also with Backwords. But overall, despite the at times reassuringly familiar quality to the sound, Strange Weekend has its own uniquely spacey vibe to it which gives it its own very distinct musical personality.

Discovering this album was an exciting experience which reminded me of the buzz of discovering the brilliance of music as a child. Right from the opening track, Drifting In And Out, I was filled with anticipation for the rest of the album and although Drifting In And Out remains one of my favourite tracks, it has a lot of company as Strange Weekend is an album with many highlights. Every song fits together perfectly with the overall sound of the album, and although my first listen did reveal a few favourites, after a few more listens I appreciated every tune even more.

Strange Weekend by Porcelain Raft is an album filled with ideas, but at the same time it also

shows that being musically creative doesn’t have to come at the expense of excellent songs. This is an atmospheric album which leaves you with a strangely warm sentimental feeling and one which will have you reaching straight for the repeat button.

Favourite tracks: Drifting In And Out, Put Me To Sleep, Backwords, The End Of Silence, If You Have A Wish.