Bring Me The Horizon & Draper - The Chill Out Sessions

Underlying electronic tendencies writ large.

 Now, I'm fully aware that as an emerging member of the blogosphere (citizen of the blogiverse? blogizen? something like that) the slightest faux-pas, even one that is unintentional, could completely torpedo my chances of increasing readership. Having said that I think I'm about to make one. Here goes:


I enjoy listening to, and actively endorse, the music that Bring Me The Horizon make.

I like Bring Me The Horizon. 

There, I said it. I'll give the holier-than-thou types a few seconds to leave (as if there was anyone reading this anyway).

Right, now we're nice and intimate:
So I read about this release potentially coming out somewhere around January 2012 (as it turns out it dropped in November, shows how much attention I've been paying, then again half the stuff I'm talking about here isn't current so no biggie) as another BMTH remix album, which made me think of something along the lines of Suicide Season: Cut Up! As the title would hopefully indicate, this couldn't be any further from the truth. The EP is a collaboration with UK ambient electronica/liquid/something-step producer Draper (check him out over on the Soundclouds), and rather than having a bunch of different DJs and producers cut up their tracks to be re-done in multiple different styles as they'd previously done on Suicide Season, this time BMTH have let Draper bring out the underlying ambient electronic currents and post-rock allusions that had wound their way through their previous full-length release There Is A Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It. There Is A Heaven, Let's Keep It A Secret (and there is no way I'm typing that fucking album title again in this post), and in my (not so) humble opinion, he's succeeded admirably.

Before we dive into checking out The Chill Out Sessions in more detail, let's have a quick run through of the source material.
As previously mentioned, There Is A Hell... is full of bits of electronica (as has been the in thing with modern metalcore over the last few years for better or worse) and art-y/post-rock vibes, while still being heavy-as-fuck, whether it be snippets of ethereal strings and bleeps as found in the intro and outro to album openers "Crucify Me" and "Anthem" or a complete instrumental detour like the synth-organ and infinitely sustained guitar laced "Memorial". "Blessed with a Curse" neatly encapsulates what the album is about, putting a bit of a twist on the classic soft/loud dynamic trope. Also scope the guitar solo at 3:36, Slash in "November Rain" would be proud.

Now that we've covered what Draper started with, let's have a little look at the end result.

The Chill Out Sessions is a  6-track drop, and although it's been called an album, it plays more like an extended play, even at almost half an hour in length. Something about the flow of it seems kind of abridged. Opener "Crucify Me" starts out almost exactly the same as the non-remixed version, but we're immediately thrown straight into mellow acoustic guitar and female vocals (provided by Canadian songstress/goddess Lights), which remain the focus of the track.
 Something I found interesting (but not surprising given the nature of this album) was the focus that Draper put onto Lights' vocals on this release, with her featuring on two out of the six songs on this release, which is exactly twice as many tracks that feature the vocals of BMTH's lead vocalist Oli Sykes. He's also done an excellent job of keeping the soul and feel of the tracks intact, utilising lots of original backing instrumentation (vocals, keys, strings etc) and samples that did get somewhat buried under immense guitar riffs. Second set "It Never Ends" shows this perfectly, being pretty much composed of an extended loop of the original instrumental intro, layered with an amazing strings melody, delay-drenched guitars, previously background-dwelling choral "oooohs" and a vocal sample, again from the intro. To me, this track perfectly defines a "chillout" piece, I would have absolutely no qualms about listening to it for hours on end, and it is one of my two standouts on the album, with my top pick being Draper's reworking of "Fuck". Again, completely instrumental, "Fuck" starts out with the plaintive strings and ringing guitars that originally featured in the breakdown of the song before being broken up by orchestral hits straight out of Hans Zimmer's Inception soundtrack. The strings then play forwards, backwards and sideways over a distorted bass guitar line and some prototypical "-step" skittering percussion. It doesn't sound like all these elements a chillout song would make, but it works.

Speaking of -step though, in my eyes (and ears) this album does have one glaring misstep. "Blessed with a Curse" appears twice here, the first time preceded by and melded with "Memorial" (as one follows the other on There Is A Hell...) in another classic chillout piece. It's all light synth-drum beats, guitars and organs drowning in reverb and delay, and plucked strings. Standard, fits well in the album, great. However, "Memorial/Blessed with a Curse" is followed by a redux of "Blessed with a Curse" which starts out fairly similarly to the rest of the album, albeit with a quicker tempo, which quickly gets a bit too messy and heavy for a chillout release. It lurches along with a sidechained kick and snare for a bit before bringing in some theremin-sounding synths and some bro-step bleeps. All-in-all it sounds like someone's done a bad Ed Banger Records impersonation, it's completely out of character with the rest of the album, and pretty much just sucks. Cut this one out of the playlist however and you've got yourself five cuts of fried-gold chillout tunes that are perfect for a lazy day on the couch or a late night end of shift with a smoke and a drink to mellow out. Fans of BMTH's heavy side should definitely give this a look to see the glimpses they got on There Is A Hell... completely fleshed out, and lovers of ambient electronica should look past the fact that this is a remixed metal release, as I feel they'll be pleasantly surprised. 

Bring Me The Horizon & Draper - The Chillout Sessions was released as a free download in November 2012 and is easily located in the usual spots online. Get amongst it.