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Product Details
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| 1. Pretty |
| 2. Rock N Roll |
| 3. When Youre In Love |
| 4. Costa (Its A Beautiful Day) |
| 5. No Trouble |
| 6. Thinking About The Good Times |
| 7. She Was Flying |
| 8. Still Need Your Love |
| 9. TK2O |
| 10. Pachas End |
| 11. Savannah Steep |
The Reno philosophy is beautifully simple and it works.
Impossible to classify, the sound veers from the lush orchestration of a John Barry Soundtrack, via St Etienne, a splash of trip-hop, some old-school funk, Nancy Sinatra, Serge Gainsbourg and a warehouse party circa 1990 (see what we mean about the classifying thing?).
Reno are Phil Burns and Andy Holt (both guitar/bass/keyboards/programming and "whatever other instruments need to be played"). The duo met on a sound engineering course in their hometown of Liverpool Phil was the tutor, Andy the student.
Not that Phil was your typical, dry, university lecturer. In his previous life, running a recording studio, he’d glamorously had a hand in the little known record company that had helped in creating the biggest selling dance record of 1989, A Guy Called Gerald’s Voodoo Ray. And when Andy needed someone to help record the tunes he’d been working on with the band he’d formed, Phil was perfect. Lacking our protagonists’ commitment and vision, the other band members fell away and Reno named after a character in insomniac Andy’s favourite "crap, late-night TV show" Renegade began to take shape. Not that it happened overnight, mind. "It took a lot of very messy nights out before we decided what to do," laughs Andy.
In the meantime, after graduating, Andy "fell into" film location work, while Phil continued to teach. During his forays into the movie world, Andy worked on Hollywood blockbuster, The 51st State, which thanks to him was filmed in and around a (very wet) Liverpool. "Yeah, it rained for the entire three months of the shoot," he grins at the memory. But because of Andy the film’s stars, Samuel L Jackson and Robert Carlisle have tasted the delights of Scouser nightlife. "During the shoot, someone in the crew had a birthday and I was asked to recommend a bar. Later that night, I turned up to join them at my local and walked in to the very surreal scene of Samuel L Jackson being in one corner, with Robert Carlisle in the other and Meatloaf ordering a drink at the bar. Obviously I then had to spend the whole night trying to appear extremely cool!"
But back to Reno. Having noodled around and come up with a winning sound, the pair needed the perfect vocals. "We didn’t want to get just another singer with that mid-Atlantic drawl that’s so prevalent at the moment," says Andy. "We wanted a really natural, pure voice; like Nancy Sinatra not a pop vocalist." So where did they go? Resourceful to the end, the pair tried the Yellow Pages and, via a canny singing coach, came up with Gina Davies, whose slinky tones can be heard on the laid-back funk of When You’re In Love and She Was Flying. The sweet vocals of singer number two (hear her on Pretty), will be familiar to any respectable warehouse rave veteran as Marina Van Rooy, who sang the 1990 hit, Sly One. But their third voice to be heard on soaring sunrise spine-tingler and first single, Costa, came as the biggest surprise. The boys, with a female vocalist in mind, got in their musical mate, Dave Barrett, to help write some lyrics. "As he warbled along to the first track" explains Phil, "we were like, Oh My God Dave what a voice". All three singers will feature prominently in the Reno live experience.
Demo tracks finally laid down, it was time to get that recording deal. Anticipating the much-warned-about route of rejection before success, the pair somewhat over-zealously sent copies to at least three people in different departments at Jive/Zomba. A few days later, they got excited calls from all three, individually, in quick succession. "We said to ourselves," recalls Andy, typically understated, "Oh, suppose that means they like us."
And you will too.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Album,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Thinking About the Good Times (Audio CD)
Love this album.LOts of great rhythms. Sit back pour a nice drink and relax or get up and groove - something for everyone
5.0 out of 5 stars
A chef-d'oeuvre lost in a sea of crap,
By Jean-Marc Cardinal (Montréal) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Thinking About the Good Times (Audio CD)
This album deserves to be known by everybody that loves music. I really don't understand how it is possible that a product that is so well balance is so rare to find. It's a perfect fusion of folk acoustic and electronic music, filled with perfect melodies that stay in your memory and make you feel good even during those sad days of november. Go and tell your favorite music shop to get it for you, it's a must! you won't regret.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thinking About The Good Times,
By "seadhna" (Korea) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Thinking About The Good Times (Audio CD)
Excellent album. Possibly the best music produced by anyone in 2003.
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