Life Mirrors

Beatless: Alex Attias, Paul Martin.
Additional personnel includes: Quasimoto, The Daughters, Mark De Clive-Lowe, Jessica Lauren.
Beatless is the collective nom de guerre of Alex Attias and Paul Martin, a duo whose various other projects include the groups River Plate and Interfearance. As Beatless, Martin and Attias specialize in a sort of disjointed, Latin-flavored groove music that percolates nicely without engaging the attention in any serious or consistent way. There are lots of lovely moments on this album, including the vaguely North African "I-Wa"; the relatively funky "Southern Breeze"; and a complex, nicely realized cover version of Allen Toussaint's "Hercules." But the album's title track (presented again at the end of the program in an entirely superfluous downtempo remix) is strangely annoying, while the bulk of the album simply floats by on a bed of perfectly competent but unremarkable club beats. Nice, but not essential. ~ Rick Anderson