Substaat - Substaat

It took me about three words to figure out that this must be Terje's new project. I was a big fan of his old project Cue to Recall and followed them from early demo stage until their album releases. Unfortunately the band met its grave far too quickly. A big surprise and also made me much more interested and kept my attention on the edge.

While Cue to Recall was more of an electro pop project, this is much more old school and sometimes border to new Nitzer Ebb or a cleaner Fixmer/McCarthy. You will have old school beats with a modern touch together with Terje's voice, that is a bit more smother than we are used to within the old school genre, more singing than shouting. While this makes it loose a bit of edge and aggressiveness, it's far more pleasing to listen to.

Substaat's debut album with the same name contains 11 tracks in this standard version. There are a lot of songs you should take a closer look at, "Catch Me", "7th State", "Broken", "Burning Ground" and "Shine". They all range from fast paced dance tracks to slower, and almost crawling, tracks. But where they truly shines and show amazing quality is in the seventh track "Unstuck". I must have listened to this track at least 50 times the last week. It got a great melody during the verse that flowers out in the melody. Terje's solid and emotional voice makes you really FEEL and imagine your own opinions and stories of what the song is about. That is the true credentials of a track that simply is holy mother of awesomeness.

If my Norwegian neighbors could push up the general quality towards "Unstuck", they will surely turn into a big name in the genre. However, this is a great debut album that hopefully will make people give this band the attention they deserve. Mar 16 2011