Campo Bravo
Goodbye, Oklahoma
KEEP Recordings

Campo Bravo is apparently a one-man-project from Mark Matos, who quite recently has started to perform under his real name, together with a band named the Illusions. This mini-album came out in 2006, and consists of eight pieces of music which can be described as traditional folk-americana. According to themselves they sound like "far off trains, roof top city sunrise, rows and rows of peach trees, muddy rivers and littered roadsides" (quote taken from their MySpace.com/campobravo site).

They name great artists like Wilco, Neil Young, Giant Sand and Bonnie "Prince" Billy as influences, which sounds promising enough to me - and looking at their musical set-up, which contains instruments like banjo, accordion, violin and acoustic guitar, the expectations started to grow. Unfortunately, Campo Bravo does not live up to this. The first listening did not affect me at all, while the second and the third also went on without really making any impact. And each time I have tried putting this record on after this, the only feeling it has given, is utterly impatience and irritation. The songs here are annoyingly slow, and has made me push the skip-button before the song has lasted more than a minute. The only exeption turns out to be the only time they push up the tempo a little: on track five, "Incinerated". The other seven songs, however, gives me nothing else than an overall feeling of boredom. I hope I never have to listen to this record again.

Copyright © 2007 Håvard Kløften