As I've been messing around with my cloud music locker project, I stumbled upon the group that always puts me at ease... Supreme Beings of Leisure. They released only three albums in the aughts, and all three were great. It's hard to describe exactly what genre I would put them in. Certainly there's an electronic component, maybe the thing that they called trip hop back in the day, but I remember what little Internet presence they had at the time, they sold as "sexy." They were primarily made of singer Geri Soriano-Lightwood and composer/production guy Ramin Sakurai. Every album was richer than the previous one.
I found the self-titled debut in 2000 by accident. I was browsing in a Borders (remember browsing for books and music in a store?), and they had this listening station with staff recommendations (remember putting random headphones on your head?). There was the SBL album, and after skipping around the tracks, I quickly bought it. It's super chill, fairly basic in composition. It's the kind of music that you want to hear when you're sipping a drink and feeling generally good about yourself. The track "Strangelove Addiction" in particular is pretty great. It was a great example at the time of what you could do when you layered more classic sounds on top of electronic sounds.
2003's Divine Operating System was a little jarring at first, because some songs have a serious 70's vibe, "Give Up" and "Divine" in particular. It's all good, and it felt different. As more of a throwback to the moody trippy stuff of the first album, you had songs like "Calamity Jane." Like the first, this album has a cohesive feel to it.
I had to wait five years for their last album, 11i, which was released in 2008. It is by far the best of the three, and it is definitely best listened to as a whole. There is not a bad song on the album, and it's far more textured and layers than the first two albums. It's hard to pick a favorite from this one, but the one that made playlists was "Angelhead." Absolutely brilliant. In fact, from that song to the end of the album, it all just flows. Like I said, this is one to listen to in its entirety, and the kind of thing that I can relax, close my eyes and listen to uninterrupted.
I don't know what happened to the band after 2008, but I'm grateful for the gifts they created. If you're looking for something new that's getting older, check them out.
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