Review: Polyphon by Southern Tribe

I first encountered Andrew Newth back in the early 1990s, when he played keyboards in the synth-pop-cum-industrial outfit Love and Violence. There, Andrew played, while brother Scott screamed blue murder about God watching us sin and begging for Eros to be his goddess. Well, the boys have mellowed. Both went off for an extended period to Rumpus Room, without a synth in sight. Andrew did carry on with the synths, in a limited fashion, releasing a few tracks here-and-there from the late 1990s – though with a far more downtempo sound than in Love and Violence – under the name Southern Tribe.
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So, it has taken a number of years for Southern Tribe’s debut album, ‘Polyphon’, to come to fruition. Comprising 11 tracks spread over a 78 minute album, it follows on nicely from his ‘Retrospective’ compilation released earlier this year. That was a clearing of the decks, collecting together his older work in a single place, and thus, he feels, did not really constitute his debut album proper. This, instead, is it. ​

​The first thing I noticed before pressing play was the album art. Is that some kind of scientific mudflat exclusion experiment on the cover? As an aquatic ecologist, this was enough to raise my stress levels ever so slightly… But fear not, as the music held within will ease all anxieties. I’ll do the lazy reviewer thing here for a description of the music, as it is summed up much better by Southern Tribe’s own biography that I ever could:

“Floating in and out of the trip-hop and downbeat music genres, Southern Tribe’s lush instrumental recordings transport the listener into immersive, textural soundscapes”.

For the most part, it is instrumental, not letting any pesky vocals get in the way of the overall vibe. Well, except on ‘Mouth Breather’. There are a few vocal samples on this track that I can’t place, even after Googling, or indeed can’t entirely understand. One says, ironically considering the largely instrumental nature of the album, “I could spend the rest of my life listening to you sing". What is it trying to say? Why the use of what might be seen as a pejorative term for the title? These are probably all the things you can contemplate while allowing Southern Tribe’s music to wash over you. Ultimately, ‘Mouth Breather’ is one of my favourite tracks on the album, though it is also one of the more up-tempo songs; the subtle rhythmic breathing running through the background is somewhat reminiscent of that in Kraftwerk’s Tour de France, and the beat a happier Trans-Europe Express. While, at the same time, it’s really not similar to these at all. There are other great, more downtempo tracks, also. ‘Will We Make it This Time’ features some wonderful glockenspiel-like chiming sounds – given the atmosphere, I imagine that the “will we make it?” in the title is more an allusion to the survival of humanity than the fear of missing the bus.

​In a contemplative mood? Give Polyphon a listen on Bandcamp, and likely lots of other outlets besides. ​