Overview
Melody Maker summarizes the "basic formula" of the album as "to wallow in the sound of television and film theme tunes of the Sixties and Seventies, but both to embellish and underpin it with jazzy breakbeats and Massive Attack synthy atmospheres". The use of harpsichord melody mirrors John Barry's film scores of the 1960s by design (and by sampling), though it has also been compared to themes for 1970s action adventure television shows such as The Protectors and The Zoo Gang.
"Slimcea Girl" took its title from Slimcea, a low-calorie bread sold in the UK during what has been reported as either the 1960s or the 1970s; the "girl" was one featured in the Slimcea TV ads, which featured a jingle inviting the viewer to be a "Slimcea girl". Another inspiration was Julie Christie's character in the film version of Billy Liar, whom Virgo described as a "liberated" "It girl", saying, "I just found it a powerful image". The song has been called "a cynical stare at the dreams and fantasies of those people who live behind the blinds )"; musically, it has been described as reminiscent of Burt Bacharach, gospel music (in its use of backing vocals arranged like a choir), and "a Tamla torch song".
"The Outsider" is noted for a hammered dulcimer part, which Virgo had written on a synthesizer, imagined with a dulcimer sound; he subsequently called a dulcimer player (Geoff Smith) to play the part.
"High Life" has been compared to the music of 1960s girl groups like The Ronettes, whose production by Phil Spector is cited by Virgo as a style he wanted to incorporate and update.
"Hello Cleveland!", a complex instrumental, was titled after a line from This Is Spinal Tap. Virgo used the title ironically; taken from a stereotypical "rock and roll" context, it was then placed on a song that "wasn't very rock and roll". It is also the most musically esoteric song on the album; a paper in music journal Echo by Sara Nicholson, presented at the sixty-seventh annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, pinpoints a number of uncredited classical recordings sampled at certain points in the song. Primarily these are works by the three principal composers of the Second Viennese School, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg; Virgo cites the school as among his musical influences. (Also see the Samples section.) The paper also analyzes the overall structure of the song: it opens with a guitar arpeggio followed by a solo piano composition (noted as being "strikingly similar to Erik Satie's Gnossienne#1 in f"), along with a 5/4 drum loop. About one minute into the song, the bulk of the samples are introduced by a one-second sample from the fifth movement of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia, which is repeated intermittently throughout this section. The beat stops in the last minute of the song, which returns to the piano motif, fading out.
The album cover and liner notes artwork, designed by an art student, consist of abstract collages incorporating photography of the surroundings of London.
Read more about this topic: Formica Blues