College - Shanghai

Drowned In Sound 60

As the title alludes, Shanghai is a concept album about China’s most populous city. Grellier takes his inspiration form the city’s culture and architecture. Like Shanghai itself, the album is a conflation of ideas, styles and a multiculturalism. Traditional Chinese instruments are juxtaposed with Western electronic nuances. Grellier recently explained Shanghai thus: 'This record is a mysterious ballad in the heart of 1920s Shanghai... An invitation to travel, a tribute to the refinement and in the delicacy of a fantasised and blurry period of time, which fed the imagination of the musicians, the artists and the architects of this mythical city. The keys of this new adventure is in your hands.'

After the slow burning intro of ‘A Strange Guide’ and ‘Bloody Palms’, ‘Hotel Theme Part I’ opens with a woozy synth line. As the song progresses a laconic melody emerges and slowly meanders along evoking a feeling of endless corridors, sun-kissed dining rooms and a feeling of unease that permeates long stays in hotels. ‘Love Peas’ mixes things up a bit by featuring Hama on vocals. Hama is a Shanghai native and sings in her native tongue Hama makes ‘Love Peas’ sound both exotic and exciting. Her delicate vocals compliment the stark music that is reminiscent of The XX. Broody guitars keep the song progressing while synth stabs fill in the gaps left by Hama’s exquisite vocals. ‘Love Peas’ is one of the stand out tracks on the album, but sadly it’s the only track with vocals. From this point on Shanghai tries to up its game, but instead of giving us some slick pop, Grellier gives us ‘Mister Fang’. This is another slow burner, slightly convoluted and laborious. While there is nothing bad about the production and arrangement, the melodies are pleasant, but after the pop gem of ‘Love Peas’ a slightly faster or engaging track might have flowed better. This actually happens on the next track ‘Briefcase’. Skittering rhythms jostle for our attention while Grellier’s trademark woozy synths flow underneath. It feels like a character theme from Street Fighter II. As the song progresses the tempo quickens until its abrupt end. But as soon as it finishes we are back to slow synth meanders. The album closes with ‘8’, which follows on the blueprint that Grellier has laid down throughout the album. Slow intro, delicate melodies with capricious synths, until it all abruptly ends.

Shanghai is an inventive album that effortlessly conjures a vision of a city. While this isn’t an original idea, there are recurring motifs that Grellier uses to evoke the movement and flux of a living city. The only real problem is that Grellier takes far too long to get to the crux of the album. On previous releases Grellier has delivered songs that have a poppy bounce to them with catchy hooks. These are sadly missing on Shanghai. The album is 15 tracks long, if a couple were removed they wouldn’t be missed. Also the majority of the tracks could be trimmed down/had their arrangements re-jiggled to deliver an album that is chocked full of ambient delight, but doesn’t drag. It's a shame as underneath all the slow production and slow burning aesthetics there is a great album slowly trying to get out.

Pitchfork 59

When the French electronic musician David Grellier landed one of his songs on the soundtrack to Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 film Drive, it must have felt a little like a prophecy fulfilled. Grellier, better known as College, has been taking cues from Hollywood aesthetics since the beginning of his career. The sleeve of 2008’s Teenage Color EP could pass for a knocked-off John Hughes poster; the cover of his debut album, Secret Diary, echoes imagery from Risky Business, Body Double, and Flashdance. The sound of those early recordings is no less faithful to silver-screen staples like John Carpenter (particularly his Assault on Precinct 13 score), Tangerine Dream (specifically, their sultry Risky Business contributions), and zapping and squelching synth-poppers Yaz.

But once you’re known for a filmic style, those associations can be difficult to shed. Grellier has let moving images—or at least the imaginary stills from the neon-tinted mood board in his mind—do much of the heavy lifting on his music. On 2011’s Northern Council and 2013’s Heritage, his two-minute sketches often came off frustratingly half-finished. It was easy to wonder if he was resting on his laurels—or even getting tangled up in them. Just as Drive’s “A Real Hero” was inspired in part by Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot who wrangled US Airways Flight 1549 to a water landing on the Hudson River, Northern Council features a track titled “TWA Flight 450”—which, coincidentally or not, is also the number of another flight rescued from the brink of disaster.

In its mood and its discipline, Shanghai is the most focused work that Grellier has done. Where previous albums often felt like collections of excerpts scooped up from the cutting-room floor, Shanghai’s 15 tracks fit together so snugly that they could easily be repurposed for an actual film score. He has largely jettisoned the percolating synth-pop of earlier albums, instead favoring slow-moving synthesizer bass, airy pads, and plenty of empty space. A less-is-more approach prevails: There are rarely more than three discrete elements in play at any given moment, and few tracks stretch beyond two-and-a-half minutes. With the exception of “Hotel Theme Part I” and “Hotel Theme Part II,” two organ variations that lend a sense of déjà vu to repeat plays of the album, tracks don’t necessarily repeat themes or even specific synthesizer patches, but in their muted colors and economical gestures, they all feel like parts of a greater whole. Like a roomful of minimalist canvasses, each one feeds off the others.

At their best, his patient miniatures waver between wistful and distant, leaving plenty of room project your own emotional states. Album opener “A Strange Guide” has sunrise chords and scene-setting crickets; “Bloody Palms” lingers on bittersweet major sevenths, lilting and understated; the regal “Hotel Theme Part I” evokes Philip Glass’ organ thrum. Only the album’s lone vocal cut, “Love Pass,” featuring a singer named Hama, breaks the mold: A soft-focus swirl of plucked strings and hushed legato. It’s pretty, almost cloying, and its wide-eyed sparkle comes closer to the work of M83, another Frenchman with a penchant for ‘80s blockbusters.

The only problem is that none of it is quite enough; there just aren’t enough musical ideas here to sustain an entire album—at least not if Grellier wants to aim for anything more than background listening. Take “Briefcase,” a single coldwave arpeggio extended for two minutes, or “Mansion Road,” a brooding bit of keyboard noodling: These aren’t songs, they’re cues in search of a scene. The album is meant as an homage to 1920s Shanghai—a tribute to “a fantasized and blurry period of time,” as the press release puts it. But that is barely the kernel of an idea, and the music doesn’t develop it beyond the level of an elevator pitch. There’s nothing specific to China, or the 1920s, in his synths or tentative melodies, and the ill-advised album cover—a pastiche of the old movie-poster trope where the male protagonist clutches a woman to his chest—doesn’t do the project any favors. Whatever he was going for, it comes off instead as an Orientalist cliché. Next time, instead of looking abroad for inspiration, Grellier might do better to start closer to home—to find his own story to tell, one that doesn’t require moving pictures in a darkened room to bring it to life.