- Derrick Boyd might look like a '60s hippy refugee, but the first album from Tone Of Arc, his project with his partner, Zoe Presnick, feels like it belongs in an Ibiza disco from 25 years ago. It's the kind of thing that might have greeted the protagonist of LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge" when he "woke up naked on a beach in Ibiza." The Time Was Right, the duo's first album, deals in a melange of soft rock, punk-funk, electro-pop and proto-house of the sort we're told soundtracked the White Isle in the mid-'80s—a sound enshrined in clubland lore, though precious few experienced it first-hand.
Having said that, the first few tracks here might make you think you've woken up with the sweats in Brooklyn. Live bass and spiky guitars give "Surrender" and "Love Kissed" a jerky No Wave swagger, while Boyd's vocals alternate between shrill and deadpan as he delivers "Chalk Hill"'s tongue-in-cheek lyrics about "cocaine flying." But then, just as you're settling in for a full album of lo-fi disco, "Lost In The Machine" plunges into what could be the soundtrack to the LSD freakout in Easy Rider—all weird chanting, backwards drones, mysterious harps and clattering percussion. That psychedelic vibe is even heavier on "Still Standing," which starts on an acoustic psych-folk tip before erupting into proggy space rock.
"Where You Belong" drops us back in the Balearics, before we get Tone Of Arc's previously released cover of Q Lazzarus' "Goodbye Horses" and the bittersweet electronic ballad "Love Sail." "People" and "Leftfield" are the type of blissful organic house that's more suited to a classic Danielle Baldelli set than anything from No. 19 artists like Art Department (whose Jonny White "executively produced" this LP).
Indeed, one of the few things you won't find on The Time Was Right is the sort of deep house Boyd delivered as Dead Seal on his 2009 album Corpus Animus. Though it too made use of Boyd's voice, Corpus Animus was an album of tracks rather than songs. Based on this LP and their recent live performances, it seems he and Presnick want to be an oddball pop duo rather than straight-up dance producers. Then again, based on The Time Was Right, Tone Of Arc are never one thing for very long.