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Fava Beats are an electronic duo from Israel. I don't really know anything about the Israeli music scene, so i have no idea if this is typical of Israeli electronica, but it is pretty good. The band consists of Eliad Wagner and Yaniv Navot, and they do a fine job.
This is their second EP, and it clocks in at just under 20 minutes. Let's look briefly at each of the four tunes here.
Things start off with The Local and Loop1 Bubbles which is the calm before the storm, or, in electronica tunes, the ambient intro. The song is a two minute interlude of wandering keyboard tones in various levels - a nice bass melody loping around while a higher-pitched melody dances frenetically over top. Rather nice.
The Next track, SQ5, adds in beats that are frenetically active in that sort of "too much caffeine, so the world is moving at a funny pace" type of sound that electronica fans seem to enjoy. Fava Beats couple the frenetic beat with some nice washes of keyboard, and a quirky little melody. It is crazy frantic fun.
The third song here is made up of tinkling rhythm and clanging beats. It is called Rabbits, and is rather Autechre-ish. Eventually the beats gel and it becomes more dance-able, i suppose. However, this really reminds me of Incunabula-era Autechre, when their music was pretty weird, but they had yet to abandon the pretense that they were making dance music. To be honest, although i appreciate the stuff that Autechre is doing these days, i like that earlier music better. And here, Fava Beats capture that sound quite nicely. Well done.
Finally, the EP ends with The Local Fluff, which is almost jazzy. Synthesizers play a melody that is so catchy it is almost hummable (and how much electronica is, really, hummable?), while beats and synth drones meander in the background. This is a very fun tune, and personally i find that with the beat turned down from "caffeine heart attack" to merely "three shots of espresso", it is more danceable. That might just be me though, but this is still a fun song.
Overall, well done. This is a decent little EP. Wagner and Navot have done some fine work. Supposedly they have a full-length coming out towards the end of the year, and if this is any indication, that will be an interesting release.
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