Troubadours – Everything Is Being Recorded All The Time

Ideas were one thing Laura Lippie, Kim Khan, Dr. Winzo, Vahan Soghomonian and Diane Barbé were never short of. As Troubadours, they recorded Everything Is Being Recorded All The Time over the course of three years, moving between Germany, France and Bali, and each contributor appears to have been given free rein to feed in their own style and approach without filtration. Taken together, the album is challenging precisely because the individual tracks are not only musically disparate, but because each one sounds shaped by the highly personal expressive vocabulary of the member behind it. As if everyone involved had been allowed – and compelled – to pour their entire creativity and musical understanding into their piece.

Across eight sprawling tracks, a great deal converges. After some nonchalant, Francophile art-pop and performative, delightfully ramshackle UK stoner-rap, the Troubadours make a stopover on Eden’s Island, only to end up half-droning their way through the underworld. Everything Is Being Recorded All The Time is full of remarkable moments, yet sometimes too enamoured with its own diversity of form. The vision is global, which means the gaze rarely lingers in one place for long. Braver still than trying everything would have been the willingness, at some point, to hold something back.