Folktronica, or electro-folk, is a complicated sell. On the one hand, it seems like a natural money pit given the relentless rise of EDM and the deep ethnographic resonance of folk music.
But, more generally, the two don’t actually sit together well, likely because the spiritual and acoustic elements within folk music are too often undermined by the synthetic textures and mechanical rhythms of electro. It’s for this reason that the biggest selling folk groups of recent years - Mumford & Sons, Florence & the Machine and the Lumineers - have generally given electronic instruments a very wide berth.
But it can be done. Alt-J, Enya and Avicii demonstrate commercial success (if nothing else) and with San Fermin’s third release, ‘Belong’, we have a record that contains moments of total majesty that kick out toward genuine originality.
The opener, Open, is one such track. Tonally somewhere between Haim and the aforementioned Florence, it seems to occupy a kind of Shakespearean fantasy space: all woodland magic and whirling tempests.
It’s marvellous, and though the album never surpasses it, there are other songs that contain similar euphoria, in particular Bride, No Promises and Oceanica. These tracks demonstrate the rich and imaginative talent for arrangement that resides within bandleader, Ellis Ludwig-Leone.
But there is some real dreck here too. The challenge with dual male and female vocals is that if not handled with incredible delicacy, well written music suddenly collapses into sentimental mush. Tracks like Belong and Bones fall foul of this. There are also some weaker songs, in August, Happiness Will Ruin This Place and Cairo, that sound like they were written for adverts.
Which, by the way, is a perfectly legitimate motivation for a song in the post CD world. It’s just that this potential motivation feels somehow antithetical to the folkish element in the music. And that brings us back to the folktronica problem at the start. Essentially, bands like San Fermin appear to smash together the least commercially driven music (folk) with the most commercially driven (electro). When the gears click, it’s magical (Alt-J), but an inch lower and the sound is devastatingly awful (Avicii). For the most part, they succeed.
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
We don't run any advertising! Our editorial content is solely funded by lovely people like yourself using Stereoboard's listings when buying tickets for live events. To keep supporting us, next time you're looking for concert, festival, sport or theatre tickets, please search for "Stereoboard". It costs you nothing, you may find a better price than the usual outlets, and save yourself from waiting in an endless queue on Friday mornings as we list ALL available sellers!
![Ateez Announce North American Leg Of [TOWARDS THE LIGHT : WILL TO POWER] World Tour](http://cdn1.stereoboard.com/images/artistimages/50/tn_ateez.jpg)
