The Porter Project

Begin the Beguine is a broken bossa-downtempo groove with a deep and subtle Hoover bassline. The song nearly has a traditional arrangement including guitar and vibraphone, countered with electro accents, and deep reverbed male vocals. Why Cant You Behave features flowing instrumentation continued from the previous track, and moves into a broken beat lounge groove. The grand piano supports the female vocals as the main instrumentation, and the track is a completely cinematic venture with full orchestration. The song shimmers with harp, hip-hop callback samples, and "old-timey" shoot-em-up gangster movie soundtrack samples.

Charles Afton's reconstruction of Be A Clown is outstandingly beautiful and intelligently arranged, featuring progressing instrumentation with glimmering vibraphone and electric piano moved along by a driving hip-hop groove and a thundering bassline. In addition, the song is accented with by stunning Wurlitzer organ. You Do Something to Me comes in next with South Asian cinematic orchestration and a broken lounge groove, tabla, and bass heavy ragga-jungle rhythms; additional instrumentation includes sitar with piano, and beautiful vocals from Brooke Bartlett (the best vocalist on the album!!) accented with various ethnic styles of male ragga styled callbacks. Blow, Gabriel Blow sits at #14 with its funky jazzed out hip-hop beats and grooving electric bassline. The trumpet arrangements and solos take center stage, as the male vocals, piano solo, and electro synth accents are all basically subdued.

At Long Last Love is a lightly funky broken beat track with Afro Latin percussion, synthetic orchestration, piano, and female vocals with male ragga-callback samples. The laid back groove is oddly similar to original Chemical Brothers works. Once wasn't quite enough, dexterously performed classical guitar finishes what it started on the album with In the Still of the Night (Reprise).

This is the most beautiful, well-arranged, and imaginative full-length album that Kriztal has released to date; the producers, Billy Paul Williams and Bo Crane (and Charles Afton), are able to compile a brilliant overall package from a remarkable array of featured artists. Cole Porter purists will undoubtedly despise and rage against the "brutal" attempt at Porter's songbook. But for a generation of open-minded and art-savvy young adults that have (for the most part) never been exposed directly to Porter's work, this is the perfect icebreaker.