Flight Facilities

Flight Facilities’ reputation for feel-good singles precedes them. In fact, they’ve cracked Triple J’s Hottest 100 for four years straight. Now the Sydney production team of Hugo Gruzman and James Lyell drop a debut album containing half of their eight singles to date. In a recent interview they addressed the singles culture eclipsing the album format, but also discussed making an album that offered more than just filler between hits. “Why not make every song a single?” said Lyell. Down to Earth does feel like an attempt to pack in an album’s worth of singles – half familiar and half soon-to-be – while still respecting the format.

It begins with a mood-setting introduction playing on FF’s name: “We ask that you move about the cabin as much as possible,” instructs a wry announcer. And while nearly two-thirds of the tracks feature a prominent guest vocalist, Gruzman and Lyell also include a few spacious tracks that reach beyond the confines of a typical single. Still, Flight Facilities aren’t so comfortable with purely instrumental music. Even the tracks without guests include lengthy vocal samples, a reliance that can make already-similar tracks start to blend into a hazy, undefined whole. The duo’s soft-focus synths and pulsing beats are well equipped to bridge the divide between EDM and pop, but so much breathy nostalgia and love-struck sentiment has a way of diminishing the strength of the best tracks here.