Living in Cairo, a city where a twenty-minute drive can turn into an hour and a half of anti-human torture in traffic, I have to be equipped with music that doesn’t play merely in the background but rather as a refuge from the painstakingly endless commute. Over the years, my car has served as a courthouse for a myriad of albums; it’s the place in which I discovered my favorite bands and where many others were discredited and kicked out of my sanctuary. Broken Waves is definitely among the first category of albums.
Broken Waves is a deeply captivating, thought-provoking album that brilliantly blends ambient soundscapes with electronic beats varying between the subtle and the overwhelmingly heavy. It is like a heavier and chirpier Boards of Canada, with hints of Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, and even Telefon Tel Aviv included at some moments. This gives the tracks on this album a very soothing, yet tense and schizophrenic feel to them, ultimately demonstrating that CHEjU's sound is more than merely a amalgamation of influences. Instead, through the project's five year history, CHEjU has successfully fashioned an individual niche and is quickly coming into his own in the electronica circuit.
Wil Bolton, the man behind CHEjU, is a perfectly capable musician whose music is supported by some amazing piano and guitar lines, as well as the versatile break beat that truly gives this album its edge. He also displays his mastery as a producer, as each layer is perfectly audible whether it is meant to be in the forefront or the background, which is the main reason why this album is extremely entrancing. The one-two punch of strong musicianship and excellent production makes Broken Waves quite the enjoyable listen - be it the stunning instrumentation or the crystal-clear sonic palette, Bolton provides our ears with a veritable audible feast.
Broken Waves' major drawback is its run time. Even though each track individually succeeds on its own merit, the album clocks in just under eighty minutes and begins to drag out toward the end. This issue actually highlights another - that the album lacks depth. Ideally, Bolton concocts a crisp electro-ambient album that flies right by, but the extended timing reveals that he's also working with a limited bag of tricks. Bolton could have cleaned up his work here by approximately halving the run time or showing more dexterity in the compositional phase and trimming the fat off some of his tracks. Individual tracks like "Object Not Found", "Blanchot", "Data Pocket", and "Pantone" are lovely by their lonesomes, but their appeal wears thin when grouped together.
Despite these criticisms, Broken Waves is still a success. Wil Bolton has admirably provided a very nice selection of tracks and undoubtedly proved that he has something to offer the electronica world. With a little more attention given to the overall construction of the album, CHEjU will be a force to be reckoned with.
-Mohammed Ashraf