Send "Lightspeed Champion " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Contactmusic |
 Opening with ''Til I Die', a Beach Boys cover with a dreamy kind of Flaming Lips meets Blur circa Think Tank album vibe; composer, songwriter, producer and musician Devonté Hynes, better known as Lightspeed Champion, immediately evidences his 'Bye Bye' EP as a multi-timbral, experimental offering. Combining strummed acoustic guitar, bass and drums with squelching low synths over which dreamy chorused vocals meander, Lightspeed Champion offers his version of ''Til I Die' as a weird hallucinogenic blend.Onto 'Underwater There Is Nothing', a reworking of a similarly titled track from his February-released album, Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You, there's a contrasting feel; one which blends a hectic and uncomfortable, meandering accompaniment and prominent hi-hat punctuation with weary vocals. Certain sections of the track sound luscious, well-arranged parts with Latin/Bossa feel contrasting smoother sections; yet in other sections, the hectic instrumentation almost smothers the vocal melody. Throughout both 'Underwater There Is Nothing' and 'Bye Bye Icarus' which follows, interjections of strings and particularly accordion bring a kind of continental feel to the tracks. Again, the busy accompaniment of 'Bye Bye Icarus' suffocates the largely spoken (rather than sung) vocals, except for glimpses where strings and/or accordion double or imitate the vocals. Much like the rest of the EP, 'The Mess You're In' offers a similar experimental and to some extent theatrical feel through its musical accompaniment. It's evident that whilst the tracks of Lightspeed Champion's 'Bye Bye' EP extensively explore instrumentation, they never really develop into particular or significant melodies and therefore the songs on this offering have an unfortunate tendency to merely ramble along. Multi-timbral, yes, but also hap-hazard and disappointing....full text |
| Thisisfakediy |
| In the build-up to this EP, much anticipation centred around the idea of "opulent strings and lush instrumentation". While they are undeniably there, thanks to the help of legendary producer Van Dyke Parks, maybe the question should have been asked of whether this would suit Dev Hynes, Lightspeed Champion, himself? 'Bye Bye' feels like an obsessive pursuit of Van Dyke Parks’ style at its most extreme to the utter detriment of the music. The best illustration of this is 'Underwater There Is Nothing', a track from Lightspeed Champion’s last album, which is stripped to the bones only for the skeleton to promptly fall to the floor and disintegrate. The third and fourth tracks are demonstrations of grand and historical sounding instrumentation with Lightspeed Champion barely managing to peek his eyes above them, the very highpoint being a 'Young Folks'-ish whistle. Where once he seemed a gentle man with unusual delicacy and attention to detail, now he is lost under the weight of admiration and the string section it brings with it. Lightspeed Champion was never meant to stand out beyond a huge group of backing musicians, power just wasn’t his game. I guess you could argue I haven’t “got it”, but this EP offers, in only four tracks, two definite points of reference and both pale in significance to their source material, leaving you feeling embarrassed for ever countenancing the comparison. What they've done to a classic, in The Beach Boys’ 'Til’ I Die', is unfathomably bad. The process of taking a sure-fire anthem, practically verdant with harmony and melody, and making it sound like a Flaming Lips B-side seeming almost impossible until now. This EP has barely any merit, and certainly not enough to stop it only diminishing the positive impression of Lightspeed Champion many of us had. Perhaps he would have been better leaving without saying goodbye at all....full text |
| Theskinny |
| Was it the collaboration with Van Dyke Parks that made Lightspeed Champion (aka Devonté Hynes) churn out something so unreasonably overblown? Sure, a bit of pretension is expected of anyone voted onto NME's 'cool' list, but when There's Nothing Underwater’s Hawaiian chic is unjustly mangled by a bad orchestra to become Underwater There is Nothing, we close our eyes and wish for the silly days of Hynes singing to pink puppets in Galaxy of the Lost. While Beach Boys cover Til I Die could be worse, Bye Bye Icarus (which sounds like it just sauntered out of a French restaurant) should come with a disclaimer to reassure that no accordions were harmed in the making of this EP...full text |
Lightspeed Champion lyrics
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