Baiki - "Do It Yourself"

A promising act - check it out if you like folk rock (6/10) The title of the album soon imposed itself : We had no label, so we threw ourselves in self-production We had no distributor, so we went into self-distribution We had no promoter, so we self-promoted We had no website, so self-webmastered Knowing we could only rely on ourselves, we named the album after this self-attitude. And to push the concept further, we declined the imagery of a multinational DIY furniture store to create the cover of our album. It was nothing more than a gimmick, no bad intentions… We must confess that the end result was remarkable thanks to the combined talents of 2 friends : Michel and Chan. So we had a good laugh though that didn’t last long. This multinational got really upset. The end result was that we had to bring their minds at peace and promise to put an end to our misdemeanour and commit to stop annoying them again in the future. This CD was therefore “released” in a fairly confidential way in Belgium at the end of 2003. Nevertheless, there only remains a handful of this “outlaw collector”. And then hope came from the South, from Montpellier to be precise. A modest label, Musiquémo took “Do It Yourself” under their wings and signed a licensing agreement. A new cover was created, the CD repressed and bang “Do It Yourself” now proudly sits in the music shop racks in France since mid-February 2005. This is quite an interesting work, blending rock, pop rock and folk rock, based on heavy use of acoustic instruments, with the singer trying to sing in four different languages. I do not know if it was such a good idea, because I have the impression that because of lack of language skills his performance is much weaker than it could be. This is definitely true with my native Polish, but Spanish also sounds very unconvincing, as if he had much trouble with proper pronunciation. Nevertheless, it is a promising act, with a potential to grow. For the time being some tracks lack good melodies, the others have them too obvious and simple. The ugly cover of the Polish folk standard "Sokoly" shows clearly that they should work much much harder on their arrangements and ability to transmit musical energy through their recordings. Still, I listened to this album with interest and I put them on my watchlist, hoping they will improve. Check them out if you like folk rock.

Royalty Free Music - Stock Music Library | Jamendo PRO [Artist's website]