Album Review: Flight Facilities - Down To Earth

Flight Facilities soar above their contemporaries on debut album, Down To Earth.

The Sydney duo of Hugo Gruzman and James Lyell have been releasing singles to both critical and dancefloor acclaim over the last few years, including the shimmering Foreign Language and rollerskating groove of I Didn’t Believe. They’ve worked with different vocalists and a range of styles across these releases, but maintained an appeal and standard of production instantly recognisable.

The disco leanings from their early string of singles are nowhere to be seen on Down To Earth, save for the lithe funk of Sunshine, which features the vocally dexterous and ever soulful Reggie Watts. Instead, the duo has gone for a pulsing house sound on tracks like Hold Me Down and Heart Attack. They venture into hip hop with Why Do You Feel, featuring Bishop Nehru, but the resulting track slips into the background compared to the memorable pop hooks from other guests.

The album is sequenced with a variety of interlude tracks like Waking Bliss and Merimbula that segue nicely into the vocal material, but they often feel like filler between the aerodynamic rhythms of songs like Two Bodies or the Kelis-inspired bump of Stand Still. They lend the album the feeling of a mixtape rather than a record, and push up the play time significantly to reach the standard album running time. “If you do an album, you have to do it right,” the pair have said, but it’s easy to question whether these tracks are indeed filler, or simply part of the duo’s well-envisioned aesthetic.