1997 Olive: You're Not Alone

When it comes to music, us Brits like our pigeonholes. Music that can be neatly labelled is a must, and if some brave soul should decide to colour outside the lines by trying something different then a new genre title is duly dreamed up to accommodate it. Nineties dance music was notorious for this; acid house, deep house, hard house, happy hardcore, breakbeat, techno, big beat - it's an eclectic linguists wet dream, but for my own part the difference between most is as subtle as the point where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet; an expert could pinpoint the difference and why it matters, but to me it's all just a lot of water.

To the above roll call can be added 'Trip Hop', a subgenre of house characterised by a chilled moodiness and/or downbeat paranoia that found it's definitive voice in 1994 with the double whammy releases of Portishead's 'Dummy' and Tricky's 'Maxinquaye'. Like most genres that find a voice, it further splintered and subdivided in the years that followed with many acts pursuing a lighter 'chill out' vibe that both found its own pigeon hole (in 'chill out' aptly enough) and also skirted dangerously close to soulless wine bar muzak. All of which potted history brings me to Olive.

A trio drawn from former members of Simply Red and Nightmares On Wax, 'You're Not Alone' manages to straddle those trip hop/chill out waters by combining a musical canon throb and skittish breakbeat backing with Ruth-Ann Boyle's gap filling vocal wrapping up the package into a coherent whole. It's a hybrid that combines a studious moodiness with an uplift of optimism, a chameleon duality that potentially makes for an apt choice at both wedding or funeral. A needless repetition means it outstays its welcome, but there's a substance here that provides the dimension to make this something to wallow in rather than the mood music wallpaper the genre was apt to wallow itself in whenever the 'lazy' button was pressed. Which in the late nineties was too often for comfort.