Artist: Mad Orange Fireworks
Album: Lifeline Cast
Label: Self
Release Date: August 2, 2013
Songs: 10
Noteworthy: Free Ain’t Moving & Black Holes
You can’t help but sway to the blues. They are just like that. Whether you listen to them in the afternoon or late at night, swaying is just your body’s natural response. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to you or is just deaf.
Mad Orange Fireworks brings a new temper of bass to blues. Consisting of Michael Dias, Kaushik Kumar, Ramanan Chandramouli and Deepak Raghu, the band seems to have managed to create blues with a twist. While they don’t call their music blues alone (the term Orange Rock was coined by them to describe their music; they also play punk, pop and rock), their music has the strongest blues influence.
The album is a testament to the band’s love, work, emotion, insanity and freedom. It is a testament to the bands idea of ‘life’. It captures a moment in their lives and presents it to us in the form of bluesy love. Each song shows a state of emotion and soul that the band wants its listeners to feel, to experience life in a new perspective.
The songs sound similar. Sparing one of two, the numbers sound like each other and while that isn’t a good thing, what stands its ground is the actual music. It is lovely. The songs are great at any point of the day and have you humming and bobbing along, wishing for some wine. Black Hole is a song that I feel one can listen to on loop. It isn’t over-rated, it isn’t understated. It is just right. So is Confusing State. There are a few slower numbers like Green Fever and Give It Back that need a more relaxed mood to enjoy while Break My Fall and Don’t Step On Me are similar numbers but with interesting guitar and bass respectively.
The few negatives about the album, apart from the fact that the music all seems to blend together, are numbers like Empty Saturday and On The Ledge. While the former is boring, the latter sounds plain off. School Boy is also a number to watch out for, but more because it sounds like you have heard it before. The stand-out number in this album, however, is Free Ain’t Moving. It starts with a funky accent and keeps you listening throughout. A must hear.
Inspired by the likes of Slingshot and Junkyard Groove, the band has an interesting and attractive flavour to their music, something that a little work can do wonders with.
