Amazon.co.uk Review
Born, the debut album by four conservatoire-trained young women has little to do with classical music. It's a gimmick, fusing a string quartet of frivolous femmes, spicy girls who all want to be "Posh", with dance beats, a big production mixing their violins, viola and cello with polished electronics. Add an enormous marketing budget and watch them top the charts. Taking themselves less than seriously--they played the
James Bond theme at their Royal Albert Hall debut gig--pop "Victory" looks assured. This single bounces along with a dash of Rossini's
Barber of Seville and a real sense of pop melodrama, in spirit little different from what guitarist John Williams did with his rather less photogenic band Sky in the late 1970s. What may surprise is that tracks such as the frenetic world-dance "Quixote" are penned by the film composer Magnus Fiennes, brother of the more famous Ralph and Joseph. "Winter" adds Jean Michel Jarre-style synth and voice-over to the ghost of Vivaldi and the infectious beat goes on, and on, and on. Sex sells, and Bond's success seems assured: this is a state-of-the-art product, but with Mike Batt of Wombles fame's bonus remix of "Victory" just don't expect it to be art. --
Gary S Dalkin
CD Description
BORN, the debut album by the sultry string quartet Bond, ismany things but certainly not a classical record in the traditional sense. And that's the point. The group expertly mines the crossover territory mapped out by artists such as Vanessa-Mae and Adiemus, and despite the hype and marketing, Bond shouldn't be dismissed as merely a pretty girl group cloaked in classical music pretension. Along with their photogenic looks, the group boasts impressive classical and pop music credentials and canny commercial instincts. The result: a big, polished production that sets classically derived themes and traditional string quartet instrumentation in a variety of musical contexts.
The album's opening track, "Quixote", is indicative of the group's method--an ultra-romantic theme abruptly explodes into a high-energy pastiche of techno-style beats, electronically enhanced vocals, and Middle Eastern-flavoured colourings. The foursome shows its multitude of musical influences in the worldbeat stylings of "Alexander the Great", the Abba-esque "Dalalai", the atmospheric "Oceanic" (with vocalist Marta Sebestyen), and "The 1812", the group's lavishly produced reworking of Tchaikovsky's well-known overture. The album closes fittingly with a remixed version of the anthemic "Victory", an apt declaration of Bond's take-no-prisoners approach.