Halou - We Only Love You (Edition Two) (2004)

artist: Halou
album: We Only Love You
release date: 1998 (this reissue: 2004)
tags: drum'n'bass, trip-hop, dream pop
we do

1. Halfbreath / 2. Loop in Blue / 3. Ifish / 4. La Mer / 5. Clip / 6. Present Tense / 7. It Was Safer When You Were Near / 8. You Are One of Us / 9. Feeling This Is Like to Fall Awake / 10. I'll Carry You

This is an album that sounds really 1998ish. You can feel in the air that Halou were just one out of many who mixed together trip-hop, downtempo, d'n'b and big beat into a combination that, in many other cases, fails to deliver. But what Halou do on this record is magic. Rebecca Coseboom is one of my favorite vocalists and I love how she pours so much positive dream energy on I'll Carry You, on You Are One of Us, on Loop in Blue... and the rest of the band works just as gorgeous, allowing a whole deal of creativity only two years after they still worked as a shoegazer band. Without Guthrie's oceanic guitars and with lots and lots of drumming instead, it works just as well making a record that "feels like falling awake". In a way, this is the sound of the sea, "La Mer". Nothing in the Halou discography would come to sound just as full of energy as this one - though that doesn't make the rest of the albums any less beautiful - thank you, Halou, for all of them.