Thievery Corporation - Explorations in Downbeat

Dub? Electronica? Lounge? Chill-out? Downbeat? There are plenty of labels one could use to define Thievery Corporation's music. A duo who perhaps never coined anything truly new, but who have managed, better than almost anyone, to blend together a vast array of genres, redefining them, making them current and - why not - accessible.

Given the two members' backgrounds, such a sharp turn was hardly to be expected. Rob Garza, originally from Chicago but relocated from a young age to the immediate suburbs of Washington, grew up musically under the ethereal wing of Hugo Largo's "Drum" and the vivid lyrics of Pixies. Then, through school, he began cultivating a love and passion for jazz and classical music. The other half of Thievery Corporation is Eric Hilton. He was born in the Washington D.C. of the Seventies. He started playing at the age of 11 in a group of young teenagers, influenced by the hard rock of Deep Purple. But it was above all the Ramones, the Clash, the Sex Pistols and, more broadly, punk's frenzy that got under his skin. Then, in high school, came new passions: the hardcore of fellow Washingtonians Minor Threat on one hand, but also old jazz, bossa nova and new wave. Several years have now passed since his "punk" period, and his new loves are ambient music, the moans of house and soul. Groups like Specials and Style Council become essential reference points, tangible proof of how to blend all these influences into one cohesive sound.

In those years, Washington's Fifth Column was a genuine clubbing institution. It's there that Hilton began performing as a deejay, eventually becoming, within a few years, a true pillar of the US capital's music scene. His chic parties, steeped in chill-out and dub, became hugely popular.

1995 was the turning point. At the Eighteenth Street Lounge, a new venue opened by Hilton, the two future members of Thievery Corporation met and, tired of spinning other people's music, decided to go into business for themselves.

Two years later came their debut full-length: Sounds From The Thievery Hi-Fi (1997).

The duo arrived in dazzling form, with a fresh, sinuous sound. Atmospheres for quiet evenings in good company. But Thievery Corporation's music is no mere lounge-bar background filler. It's simply music to relax to. The nocturnal glimmers of the duo's sonic universe seem to want to expand space itself, to open up the mind.

An absolute cornerstone of the genre, Sounds From The Thievery Hi-Fi sets aside experimentalism and faux avant-garde posturing, ploughing the fertile ground of an atavistic dub ("Transcendence") and a stellar chill-out ("Shaoline Satellite"). And while the relaxing (and relaxed) "The Glass Bead Game" strikes at the heart with waves of delay and reverb, jazzy echoes wrap around the melody of ".38.45". "Assault On Babylon", meanwhile, is a programmatic anthem to the future of Thievery Corporation.

Hailed by critics and the specialist press as a starting point for the (re-?)birth of chill-out/dub, the album would go on to achieve incredible success, including commercially.

After an album that launched the exciting "Dj Kicks" series and a staggering number of club performances around the world, the Washington duo returned to the studio to shape their second official record.

The album, titled The Mirror Conspiracy (2000), marks a significant, if not radical, shift in the band's formula. Compared to their hugely successful debut, new sounds come into play and the song structures grow even more refined. Wrapped in a hazy jazz veil, the record boasts some notable collaborations. The atmospheres, always rarefied and hazy, take on Jamaican and South American hues. Influences à-la Bebel Gilberto underline the duo's Latin streak, but Indian ("Indra") and Middle Eastern ("Lebanese Blonde") textures also surface. The dub warmth of "Illumination" carries us off to the Far East. After all, the border with world music isn't that far away. And while the liquid, stretched-out atmospheres of "Air Batucada" provide a bed for sharp percussion, "The Honk Kong Triad" winks at the most minimal Air, just as the sinuous sounds of "Le Monde" are steeped in a dreamlike, (twilit) French mood.

Never has a musical journey been more pleasurable.

Meanwhile, the audience drawn to Hilton and Garza's languid atmospheres keeps growing. Groups such as Tosca, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Gotan Project, St. Germain and Koop emerge, to name just a few. In truth, countless DJs slip into this sonic limbo, far removed from any kind of turmoil. Ascetic regeneration and mystical catharsis. More than in the samples, the ethnic and exotic beats, or the stretched-out sounds, it's in the spirit that the true fulcrum and essential core of Thievery Corporation's compositions lie.

The year 2002: the American pair's third studio album. The Richest Man In Babylon revisits their formula, leaning too on a formidable collaboration with Italian-Icelandic singer-songwriter Emiliana Torrini. And while funk-jazz hints ("Liberation Front") represent something of a novelty for their sound, the warm Latin textures of "Meu Destino" and "Exilo" (sung in Portuguese) transport the mind to arid desert expanses. The sulphurous bossa nova of "From Creation" sketches notes that drift on the wind and dissolve. The ethereal lift of the opening "Heaven's Gonna Burn Your Eyes", which culminates in the pure, celestial vocals of Emiliana Torrini, marks a perfect symbiosis of dream-pop and dub. The dreamy "Until The Morning" does even better, with the Italian-Icelandic chanteuse delivering another masterful vocal turn over a bed of soft keyboards (it would later become a huge hit thanks to a TV advert).

The Asian flashes of "Facing East", reined in by the electro-dub inertia of "The Outernationalist", embody the push and pull that, with due exceptions, characterises the whole album. And if the magical essence of Air were to merge with the sonic aesthetic of Tosca, "Omid" and "All We That Perceive" would be the result.

Rich with the usual vocal features that mark the duo's productions, The Richest Man In Babylon is a kaleidoscope of echoes from distant lands. But its less convincing traits, especially compared to earlier Thievery productions, surface more noticeably, due to the album's greater unevenness. At times the melodies feel too flat, lacking the emotional lift typical of their early work.

Meanwhile, the pair threw themselves into an endless string of side collaborations. Having become a true pillar of the soft electronic scene, they were in high demand for countless remixes. Suffice it to mention collaborations with David Byrne, Pizzicato Five and Stereolab to grasp the stature the duo had by then achieved. Or just consider the compilation titled "Sounds From The Verve Hi-Fi" (2002), a collection of remixes made for the jazz label Verve, or the later "The Outernational Sound" (2004). The latter, notable for its short running time relative to the number of remixes included (20), comes across as a steady continuation of what was by then the classic Thievery Corporation sound. The usual dub reverbs, combined with the cosmic shimmer of the keyboards, reflect intimate traits clouded by a thin veil of melancholy.

2005 is the year of The Cosmic Game, which renews their commercial success, boasting a star-studded cast of guests (among others, Flaming Lips, Perry Farrell and David Byrne, as well as singer Gunjan). Musically, however, the album marks the lowest point of the duo's career, proving to be their least inspired work. The great avenues of chill-out, trip-hop, lounge and dub have by now been explored and combed through in every direction. And yet, how can one resist being swept up by the primal sweetness of the cosmic-dub of "Marching The Hate Machines" (featuring Flaming Lips) or the driving hip-hop pulse of "Warning Shots"? There's no shortage of highlights, in other words. "Satyam Shivam Sundaram" and "Doors Of Perception", with their Eastern flavour, serve that psychedelic streak also reflected in the cover artwork, while "The Time We Lost Our Way" recalls the elegant jazzy arrangements of Beth Gibbons's enchanting "Out Of Season". Liquid pieces like "A Gentle Dissolve" and "Holographic Universe", on the other hand, seem like little more than pleasant sampler cut-and-pastes.

The Cosmic Game is perhaps the only album by the duo best suited to background listening, with a few snacks to distract you. It doesn't entirely disappoint, but it doesn't captivate either. A work too uniform to hit hard, too flat to truly excite.

In 2008 Radio Retaliation revisits their "global music", born from the meeting and exchange of different cultures, pushing its boundaries further still. Proof of this lies in the list of guests who appear across the album's fifteen tracks: artists from every corner of the world who, in keeping with the duo's discography tradition, lend their voices to every song. Sleepy Wonder, a reggae legend and longtime friend and collaborator of the duo, opens the dance with "Sound The Alarm". The soft percussion of the opening track, accompanied by visions straddling the Arabian peninsula and Latin America, merge with gentle psychedelic reverbs. And while "Mandala" takes us by the hand and leads us to India, it's Sleepy Wonder again who appears on the title track: reggae vocals, firm, steadily repeating basslines in a placid motion, a touch of trumpet, and a Rototom Sunsplash kind of atmosphere. The following "Vampires" reveals the less "geographic" side of Thievery Corporation, with the voice of Nigerian star Femi Kuti grafted onto a jazz-tronic base made of beats as sweet as they are dense.

But the journey sets off again, and it's time for the bossa nova of Seu Jorge and Verny Varela, whose respective "Hare Krsna" and "El Pueblo Unido" let the spiced scents of Latin America, the favelas and the sprawling metropolises breathe. "(The Forgotten People)" is an instrumental with Eastern-tinged contours, marking a watershed moment on the album. "33 Degree" — probably the most successful track — juggles echoes of Massive Attack's "Protection", while the enchanting "Beautiful Drug", a rare, near-unique moment in Garza and Hilton's entire career, shows how the cold north can still wrap you up and warm you through.

LouLou's gentle vocals on "La Femme Parallel" paint spring nights over urban landscapes, and, listening closely, Air aren't really that far off. The album then heads towards its close with the liquid flow of "The Shining Path", "Blasting Through The City" — an exemplary track of what Thievery Corporation represent today — and "Sweet Tides", a wonderful, melodically celestial opening that, following in the footsteps of "Heaven's Gonna Burn Your Eyes", spreads its wings and paints a breathtaking conclusion.

Thievery Corporation revive the glories of their early work, at times reaching moments of pure poetry. With a varied and extremely polished album, Rob Garza and Eric Hilton do what they do best: take us by the hand and whisk us away on a journey.

Culture Of Fear (2011) once again shuffles the deck - albeit with restraint. The title itself, along with the dark, menacing cover art (which almost looks like a Daft Punk helmet!), serves as a manifesto for a politically charged album with a more pronounced electronic imprint. Tracks like "Web Of Deception" and "False Flag Dub" wear their symptoms right there in the title. Above all, the rap on the title track is perhaps the album's most incisive moment - a mix of aggression and the duo's now-familiar laid-back atmospheres. But tracks like the ethereal "Take My Soul" or the melancholy reggae of "Stargazer" also confirm themselves as classics in perfect TC style.

In 2014, Saudade does the exact opposite. This time Rob and Eric prefer to melt into tropical tenderness and love songs, relying exclusively on female vocalists. The title - that saudade so dear to Brazilians - should speak for itself; while the duo had already flirted extensively with Brazilian sounds in the past (even hosting Seu Jorge as a guest), this time around bossa nova becomes the undisputed master of the house, flanked only by the faintest hints of electronics and a light dusting of downtempo.

The five vocalists move deftly between Portuguese, Spanish, French, English and Italian, delivering knowing, lascivious performances steeped in mellow erotic warmth, as if this were the soundtrack to a 1970s porno with a girl in a fur coat (naked underneath) strolling along the Seine - see the opening "Décollage", sung by Lou Lou, and "Claridad", performed by a capricious Natalia Clavier. Elin Melgarejo sings "Sola In Città", a delightful Italian-language track with 1960s flavours somewhere between Mina and Ornella Vanoni, and also delivers the feather-light, hip-swaying samba of "Para Sempre", which lends a bit of extra life to the album's mood. On the single "Depht Of My Soul", meanwhile, Shana Halligan's voice almost brushes up against the cinematic tones of Lana Del Rey (helped along by the sumptuous string arrangement backing her).

The substance doesn't change. Anyone who considers Thievery Corporation's music to be little more than radical-chic aperitif muzak certainly won't change their mind after listening to "Saudade" (if anything, quite the opposite). Even longtime followers may find the new record's uniformity a bit heavy-handed at times, while the absence of any true ambient passages, in favour of a more dominant song-based format, may leave those expecting another cerebral trip to new destinations feeling somewhat adrift. And if we really wanted to twist the knife, we could point out that there are hundreds of original bossa nova records out there just waiting to be rediscovered, rather than a modern rehash cooked up by two pasty guys from Washington DC. But let's not forget that the purpose of Thievery Corporation's music is also to ease the excessive tensions of modern life - to "wind down", as they say these days. So nothing new under the sun, but at least there's still sun to be had, and so a record like Saudade is welcome too - not essential, but still a thoroughly enjoyable exercise in chill-out finesse.

Three years later comes The Temple Of I And I (2017), the result of a year spent by Hilton and Garza with the band in Port Antonio, Jamaica, at Geejam Studios. The reggae inflections of their repertoire return to the fore, between classily executed standards ("Strike The Root", "True Sons Of Zion", "Weapons Of Distraction") and more enveloping ballads like "Love Has No Heart", carried by strings and Shana Halligan's fine voice; elsewhere there's room for Racquel Jones's rap ("Letter To The Editor", "Road Block") or the return of classic dub echoes (the title track). Overall, an honest record that frames Thievery Corporation's typical sound with a reggae tinge, without staging any revolutions.

A year later comes Treasures From The Temple (2018), featuring mostly remixes and alternate arrangements of the previous work

Almost as if to celebrate over 20 years of musical exploration, Thievery Corporation then released Symphonik (2020), a project inspired by the concert the duo had given three years earlier at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. On that occasion, Garza and Hilton collaborated with young classical musicians and composers, performing 22 tracks arranged for strings and winds. Here, then, eleven of the US band's classics are brought back to life through the symphonic sounds of the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. The result is a refined record in which the original lounge sound intertwines with the orchestral breadth of the arrangements, though without adding anything substantially new to the group's artistic arc.

Contributions by Damiano Pandolfini ("Culture Of Fear", "Saudade")

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