Back Catalogue. ZERO 7. “When it Falls”

People ask us about music with grow­ing fre­quency.  They know we love to whis­tle while we work. We thought we’d start to share some of the music most heav­ily rotated within the HighStreet Studio more offi­cially within the HighStreet Blog fig­ur­ing that what might be old to us may be new to you.  We’ve selected per­haps one of the most played albums in our design offices for this par­tic­u­lar post…

Zero 7, a group com­prised pri­mar­ily of two for­mer stu­dio producers,  British duo Sam Hardaker and Henry Binns eased onto the scene with a fresh, masterpiece of a first album enti­tled “Simple Things” in 2001.  If you don’t have that one you should con­sider chang­ing this.  This was the hey­day of the “Chill” move­ment and “Simple Things” may be the best exam­ple of how to chill and yet remain stim­u­lated enough not become irri­tated by tedium, ever made.  But - we focus on their sec­ond release “When it Falls” 2004, because it is also good and it has wound up being played in our store per­haps more than it’s supe­rior predecessor.

When one lis­tens to the open­ing song “Warm Sound” — one can­not help but con­jur the pink-orange glare of a set­ting sun.  There is a lift­ing and a low­er­ing that is unde­ni­able. It is anti-climactic yet you find your­self sat­is­fied enough to let it play. As the album per­sists, the cli­max never deliv­ers, but you real­ize that you are actu­ally lis­ten­ing to a warm sound. The rest of the album is sim­i­lar… gen­tly hip.  It is first rate chill record with­out a doubt.

Why does ‘When it Falls” get more HighStreet air­play than “Simple Things” ?  It is lesser known, there­fore more exotic to our audi­ence and in terms of back­ground music, mean­ing music that lets you read a book, enter­tain and invite dis­cus­sion, dine, think and oh yes…shop,  “When it Falls” is sim­ply per­fect for that.  It will relax the very tense and gen­tly uplift the down-trodden - inter­fer­ing with noth­ing while doing it.

What the heck, just buy them both.

HighStreet