We first encountered Bambie in Hong Kong last year, when we stumbled across his particular brand of Rock n Roll in a bar in Wanchai. It was this lucky encounter which introduced us to Springboard Media Ltd, the British company which was releasing unknown artists such as this onto an eager world. In previous months we have cast our eyes over various Springboard offerings on KlubKat (including ABB, The Inflatable Sharks and Julie Levy), so it was a pleasure recently to find ourselves in the position of catching up on Bambie via his newly released album "Be Home Soon".
Of course, this time I had the advantage of knowing more or less what I was going to be listening to for this review - in fact I'd been looking forward to receiving this CD for some time. However, there is always a danger after hearing such consistently high quality offerings as Springboard have been releasing that the next would be the metaphorical bad egg - especially when all you have to go on about an artist is one dark night in a small but packed Hong Kong bar!
Bambie describes his sound as a mixture of Folk, Rock, Pop and Blues - all the right elements for me. Some of the tracks on "Be Home Soon" are definitely solid gold rock n roll - "It's not over 'till its over", for example, borrows that swinging rock melody used by just about every seventies rock band on the planet and therefore is instantly recognisable. With this track little attempt seems to have been made to update the rock format for the 21st century, which means that it is very solidly targeted. On the other hand,
other tracks have been updated to appeal to a modern generation of rock junkies!
Tracks such as "Queen of my Heart", are pure nectar for the romantics among us - slap it on in the background and invite the girlfriend around. Bambie seems to be just as much at home singing ballads as he does traditional rock and pop. Track 8, "Music is all we need", has words which refer to BB King, the legendary Blues artist whose venue I have visited in Memphis - and this shows very clearly that Bambie has a background in music and knows what he is talking about. Most modern artists sing about nothing but sex and how to get sex and what to do when you get sex, and usually aren't even very subtle about it - Bambie talks about things the way rock and pop musicians used to, with words you can hear and also relate to. Very refreshing. Perhaps this is because none of the members of the band are young musicians and collectively they have a long musical past behind them.
Some changes appear to have been made since our live review of Bambie last year. On electric and acoustic guitar and Mandolin, we now have the obviously very talented Robbie McIntosh. Paul Beavis provides percussion, Dave Christopher the bass guitar and Steve Smith the keyboards. Dave and Steve also lend their voices to the backing vocals, and together the group manages to cram this little silver disc with 13 very fine numbers.
We like Bambie here at KlubKat - another fine addition to the Springboard fold. As usual, you can pop on over to http://www.smltd.net to check out all the latest releases and information. This is a label to watch for quality new artists, and Bambie is an artist to watch. Will he be the cult figure of tomorrow - only time will tell!!!
