One Eskimo is a project put together by Rollo from Faithless, Passion Pictures (the team behind the animation for the Gorillaz) and Kristian Leontiou. Rollo is a renowned music producer, and is older brother to Dido, with whom he helped to write and produce the multi-million selling albums No Angel, Life For Rent and Safe Trip Home. This being the case, as you can imagine, the production qualities of Kandi, the second single from the debut One Eskimo album 'All Balloons' [which is scheduled to come out on Little Polar Records in 2009] is impeccable. Frontman Leontiou has had past experience in the music industry in which, he was marketed towards the popular culture and in 2004, had a top ten hit in the UK and a widely successful album. Uncomfortable with the music and image he was pressured into presenting, Leontiou broke away from the pop scene and embarked on the One Eskimo project. The band itself (much like the Gorillaz) is a faceless band which actually are made up of animated characters that I guess in some way represent the actual members. As with the Gorillaz, I love the concept of this and the amount of work that must be involved in pulling off an animated, character based band. All the ticks in the right boxes. I am really looking forward to listening to Kandi.

Slipping Kandi into my CD player I am faced with a 5 track single that contains the original version, different Cicada versions and various instrumentals. The A-side, Radio Edit and main version starts of with an acoustic guitar, some nice percussion and a warm sounding bass. Leontiou doesn't take long coming in vocally and weirdly he kind of reminds me of Will Young in the quality of his voice. I must admit, although I can appreciate the quality of Will Young's voice I am not a fan of it's tonal qualities. This can also be said for my opinion of Leontiou's voice. The chorus vocal tone is nicer though and is my favourite part of the song from a vocal perspective. Musically the original version of this song is quite monotonous feeling almost loop based rather than a live band with the only musical differences being that the chorus skips up a note or two whilst continuing the same picked pattern. The only break from this monotony is the little musical interlude before 10 thousand more choruses carry on to the end of the track. With so much monotony in this version of Kandi I am not overly impressed with my first impressions of One Eskimo.

The B-Side is the Cicada Vocal Mix which is a much more upbeat and dancy number. With a lovely eighties sounding snare kicking in before an awesome four on the floor beat back dropped by quirky noises this Cicada version really has everything you want out of a song. The Cicada version is instantly better than the original. I also like the effect that has been put on the vocal in this version and how much that effect has made the vocal less of a focus allowing it to fit into the mix more nicely. The Cicada version is MUCH less monotonous and gets me bopping back and forth to what is a VERY catchy beat. One Eskimo should stick to dance based versions of their songs like this as they seem to transcribe much, much better and would, without a doubt, garner them a lot more success. Imagine the four characters dancing their asses of to the Cicada Vocal Mix, it would be great. Much better than watching four miserable characters sitting on stools playing a monotonous acoustic version of the same song.

The remaining tracks ended up being a waste of my time. Track 3 'Cicada Dub' is exactly the same as the first Cicada mix except it only has the chorus vocals. Track 4 is then just a pure instrumental Cicada version whilst Track 5 is an instrumental of the original song.

All in all a good effort from a new band that, if they concentrate on the more upbeat versions of their tracks would no doubt gather a lot of fans across the UK. There are already too many acoustic artists which makes it really hard to stand out from the crowd whereas there is surely always room for quirky dance music from four crazy looking cartoon characters?