Not quite as joyous as you'd hope.
Infantjoy is an ambient, electronica, conceptronica project composed of Brits James Banbury and Paul Morley, who are joined on this release by a variety of other individuals who perform activities as diverse as producing, mixing and singing. It is their second album release, a follow-up to 2005's 'Where The Night Goes', a Steve Reynolds album of the year.
'With' opens promisingly with 'Leaving Somewhere With Someone', a chilled piece of electronica that encourages you to lie back and think for a while. The beat is undisguised without being intrusive and the isolated piano notes add a dreamlike texture. Second track 'Composure With Isan' conjures to mind dripping pipes and abandoned warehouses due to its backing layers, but the forefront is again largely composed of a thin layer of piano notes; and after a while one begins to think the original idea behind the track has got lost somewhere.
Sadly, that is a feeling that begins to permeate the whole album. 'The Beat Within' lacks much of a beat at all, and is certainly unlikely to appeal to electronica fans who prefer to be able to dance to their music; actually, it's hard to know what anyone is supposed to do to infantjoy. You can't really dance to it, yet the tracks are too short and lack the soundscapes and development ideally needed for the chill-out or psy genres and displayed brilliantly by bands such as Boards of Canada or Shpongle. 'Exposure With Lodge' is probably the most up-tempo track, certainly more so than the sadly forgettable 'Blossom On A Stem' and 'Application #4'; but the fact sadly remains that there are many other artists and groups in the world today attempting the same thing – and doing a much better job of putting it into practice.
Towards the end of the album there are several tracks with vocals. Unfortunately, they fail to add any centre point to the tracks and in fact feel somewhat out of place. The soft female vocals and bland lyrics on 'Ghosts (With Populous)' sound cheesy, and overall the tracks without vocals sound better than those with; it's as if the band added vocals in the hope that they could hide the fact that these tracks have no purpose or intention behind them. 'Absence' utilises spoken vocals and alternates the focus of the sound between the left and right, in an attempt to create an eerie feel that sadly feels pretentious and slightly ridiculous – like a student performance art piece (which it may make the perfect soundtrack for, in fact). Closing piece 'Arrival (Here Here) With Tunng' gets the prize for most interesting track; combining a disjointed pace with random vocals (and vocal effects) that achieve the spooky feel 'Absence' could only attempt. All in all, this isn't a poor collection of songs, the duo and their collaborators have produced some interesting texture and overall it sounds more professional than a lot of music in its genre. Several of the tracks, especially those in the first half of the album, could easily be used as film soundtracks – perhaps for a scene portraying the main character looking pensive whilst driving down a deserted motorway. It isn't an exciting collection of songs however, and it's hard to imagine anyone making this their first choice of CD to listen to when they have Faithless or Infected Mushroom to turn to instead.