CD: Flight Facilities - Down to Earth

This October lo-fi, fuzzy VHS-style footage of Kylie Minogue in a ripped tee-shirt swaying on a mattress in a messy loft apartment singing Flight Facilities’ breakthrough song, “Crave You”, popped up in internet-land. It was an unexpected move that successfully amped up expectations for the Australian duo’s debut album. Kylie’s acapella appears on the album, uncredited, as well as the original, a smooth, sleepy, longing, slothful love song and lazy dance throb which first appeared in 2010.

It made clubland sit up and pay attention. If this album had swiftly followed, ahead of the deep house boom of 2013-14, ahead of acts such as Disclosure, Chris Malinchak, Hot Natured, and the rest, it might have sounded in a field of its own. Now it must be judged alongside the multitudes mining similar territory, sometimes more successfully.

Down to Earth would work beautifully if I was bongo’d out of my bonce on a tropical beach, wherever “the new Ibiza” is right now, my head muzzed with MDMA empathy, my eyes half-closed in the heat, letting the waves of pleasing, beat-driven lassitude massage me. Unfortunately it’s rainy and cold outside, the summer's long gone, and there’s simply not enough here to drag me off on Flight Facilities' cuddly, sun-blissed trip, the journey laid at the album’s start via an aeroplane-style announcement. There are lovely moments, delicious, frothy chill-out such as “Merimbula”, the cheesily ethereal “Apollo” and “Claire de Lune”, featuring singer Christine Hoberg, which is redolent of Debut-era Bjork, all swooping vocals, spaciness and clean, sparse groove.

Unfortunately, there simply isn’t enough character on display to make this album more-ish. There are too many faceless 4/4 plods that aim for idyllic, eyes-closed euphoria but muster blandness, and the cod-Eighties soul-funk of “Hold Me Down”, featuring Stee Downes, is just knowing and horrid. The production is impeccable, every surface polished to a gleam, yet letting warmth glimmer throughout. Perhaps that’s what Flight Facilities have been up to in the four years since “Crave You”. If so, it was a mistake. In 2011, despite its flaws, this would have drawn plaudits; now it’s simply another background bubbler to be enjoyed momentarily by laptop-tappers in trendy London coffee shops.

Overleaf: Watch Kylie attack "Crave You" a capella in her messy bedroom