Market - Market

artist: Market
album: Market
release date: (2008)
tags: trip-hop
downtown

1. (Not) Necessarily So / 2. Safe / 3. Island / 4. M6 / 5. Trainbell / 6. 68 (Goneaway) / 7. Monster Sound / 8. Thursday / 9. Remain Normal / 10. Kawasaki / 11. Madstore / 12. Grand Prix 73 / 13. Shield / 14. Television

This album has a pretty funny history. After the major label Interscope Records released the M6 single, Market have disbanded before their debut album (finished in 1998) was officially released. Anyway, through some miracle, the tracks from the sessions have leaked in various versions onto Soulseek, where it remained an obscure treasure before and even after the former members of the band have decided in 2008 to open a MySpace profile and semi-officially release on CD the album for those who are interested...
More than a decade after it was made, this album sounds remarkably dated, bland and generic - if there's a trip-hop album that you'd expect to hear from a mainstream label, it sounds like this. But that also means that we have some actual "hits" - or so they could have been with a better fate - the "main candidate" being M6, easily their best song and, like I said, their only official single. Piano, scratching, metropolitan sound, female vocals - all checked.
Market are merely for trip-hop collectors, if you are in love with the Bristol sound in itself and don't care for over-the-top experiments or creative genre bending, I warmly recommend this "cookie cutter".