Flight Facilities have always been known for their interesting take on electronic-pop, and their ability to fuse dance music with instantly accessible song structures has turned them into one of Australia's premiere musical exports. They've been steadily building their brand over the past couple of years, and with each passing release, they've brought themselves closer to the kind of widespread recognition that could turn an album like their new one here into a viral success. The music within is a compilation of a few different types of electronic music, but on the whole, it's one-hundred-percent Flight Facilities, and everything from visual branding to the way the album is structured makes it very clear who was behind the creation of the project. We've been pretty supportive of these guys' singles for awhile now, but this album takes all the pieces we've been enjoying for the last couple of months, and puts them together into one very cohesive package. In fact, it would probably be a mistake to assume that the album's overarching theme and sound was cooked up after the first couple track came out. It would seem much more likely that FF had the album concept pretty much worked out from start to finish way before any of us even heard the first note. Tracks like "Two Bodies", "Crave You", and "Stand Still" weren't really teasers to the final product, but windows for us to peep through as the band gave us little glimpses of what the final product was going to sound like. All your familiar favorites now make so much more sense when enjoyed within the context of the larger body of work. Even from the get-go, the transition between the intro track and "Two Bodies" is not only seamless, but extremely well thought-out, and it only gets better form there. Down To Earth is one of those electronic albums that could easily do double-duty as a DJ set, because each song has been painstakingly crafted to interlock with the next. There's absolutely no reason to throw the tracklist on shuffle, because a good chunk of the magic would be lost if you robbed yourself of the joy of hearing each song melt into the next. Now, there's plenty of older material on the album that still shines bright, but it'd be a failure if none of the new offerings could keep up, either. Fortunately for all of us, they've included songs like "Clair De Lune", "Sunshine", and the album's namesake, "Down To Earth" to keep us content. Each of the tracks have their own flavor, but they also clearly have FF's fingerprints all over the production work, and if you had any doubt that the duo had the depth to pull off a full-length, then get rid of those while the mellow waves of sound from "Claire De Lune" wash over you, or the soul-infused thump from "Sunshine" gets you excited about dance music again. Lastly we'd be remiss if we missed Bishop Nehru's feature on "Why Do You Feel". It's not only an outlier on the album, but it's also one of the projects strongest tracks, and it'll be one you listen to over and over again. All in all, Down To Earth is a big win for the Australian duo, and now with the ahead of them, the sky's the limit for where their sound can meander next. Check out our favorites from the project below, and purchase the entire thing on iTunes.
Flight Facilities