Island is the latest single from Czech republic band, November 2nd. We grabbed ourselves a listen.
This track has a real live feel to it. The drums sparkle as they crash through. Kick and snare are suitably dominant in the mix for this style of music.
Island is a gritty rhythm and blues style track with a little funk and some powerful female vocals.
The vocals set me in mind of JJ Wilde, who is doing particularly well on the Rock Blues scene in Canada at the moment. There’s a confidence in the vocalist with some great use of twang and belt techniques.
I have a feeling that November 2nd are likely to be captivating in a live situation. There’s something about a good rock blues band that doesn’t quite translate so well into a studio setting. This is the kind of music to be heard live in my opinion.
There’s some interesting panning on the recording with the occasional background vocal or instrument panned hard left or right.
The song has some very unique guitar riffs in places that keep the listener on their toes, whilst in other places there are guitar riffs that will be all too familiar to fans of rock blues.
I enjoyed the middle 8 which added a little variety into the song and I liked how it dropped into the section of guitar solo with background vocals.
For me, the production let this track down slightly. Another reason I’d prefer to see an artist like this in a live situation.
One often finds that rock blues studio albums can be a little on the muddy side and I felt this for this track too. I’d like to have seen more separation between instruments. It feels like a lot of instruments competing for the same frequency range, resulting in a harsh and muddy sounding mix. Some tweaks to give some more separation and take out a little of the harshness of the cymbals and the muddiness in the overall track would bring this song to life for me.
Reading November 2nds biography is like a who’s who of big names. They’ve landed themselves some fantastic support slots and I’d really like to see their social media numbers come more into line with the kinds of shows that they’re occasionally playing.
November 2nd are clearly a very determined and charismatic act who are pushing as hard as they can to be heard by a wider audience. Island is just the kind of track to be picked up by rock/blues radio presenters. For a UK audience, I particularly would suggest contacting the IBBA. For North America – perhaps rock blues influenced college radio would be a good target.