Likened to Metronomy, Junior Boys and Blood Orange, this debut track from Oslo Parks for new London label X Novo is ticking the boxes.
EP Review: Fame - The Acid
This new project from Adam Freeland, together with Ry X and Steve Nalepa, blows my mind. I've always harboured a soft-spot for Freeland, long after he ceased being 'cool', but this is probably his best work yet... The kind of sophisticated ambient pop hinted at on his remixes on GU32.
The original version (featured in the video above) doesn't feature on this remix EP, but it's a gorgeously wasted sultry dubby track full of loose rhythms, slow synths and gently picked guitars that evoke Spanish sunsets.
The second surprise is that Jesse Rose, whom I haven't heard a thing from since minimal was the new hot thing, delivers a gorgeously subtle remix. The synths are accentuated and the rhythm track tightened giving the track an even more dreamy, spectral sensation. It is like floating 500-feet above the world as it goes around its all so busy parties and hectic nattering, whilst we are several steps removed, relaxed yet slightly saddened by the distance. It's like tapping against the glass of sobriety when you know you can't quite remember what it felt like.
Rose also provides a dub, which strips out the vocal and some of the synths to further emphasise the warm bass.
Finally Factory Floor provide a much more robotic interpretation, full of their usual Germanic mechanical wonder but filtered through the same dreamy gaze of the original to create a weirdly balanced piece that blends warm humanity with clinical efficiency.
All three mixes plus the original are great. I've not had the chance to listen to the album yet but based off of this release I definitely will do - you can currently stream it in full on Soundcloud below. Order the album now from Amazon.co.uk on CD or MP3 [affiliate links].
Album Review: What Is This Heart? - How To Dress Well
It feels like the world of 'indie R&B' (call it what you will) has exploded since How To Dress Well's second album, Total Loss. That album was released two years ago but since then Frank Ocean and Miguel have both achieved significant mainstream success, Beyoncé has evolved her sound in reflection of an increasing desire for experimentation and lyrical honesty and a Blood Orange created my favourite album of last year.
How To Dress Well, real name Tom Krell, still remains one of the artists that defined a new approach to modern soul music and on What Is This Heart? he seems determined to continue to make his mark on a genre that has grown much larger than him. R&B seems to be devisive at the best of times but there is no doubt that Krell's emotionally cloying, falsetto lead and extravagantly produced third-album will be so more than most.
Yet for those that also believe in the power of pop music to address big questions of the heart, those that believe those feelings are the source of big questions, will find a complex album to get lost in. 2 Years On (Shame Dream) opens What Is This Heart? like a guilty lover creeping in the back door as Krell recounts tales of his youth. It is an opening that doesn't announce the album's arrival so much as quitely writes it down and slips it to you in a note.
Momentum is built through What You Wanted and Face Again, the latter's rough bass line foreboding as Krell cries out "Look me in my face again and tell me what I oughta be... I really think you know what's best for me, yeah I know you know what's best for me."
Those early singles, Repeat Pleasure and Words I Don't Remember, form a collective tent pole moment in What Is This Heart?'s centre, lyrically and musically. Repeat Pleasure nails the challenge of modern monogamy when contrasted to a psychology broadly designed to maximise genetic distribution: whoever you think you want now, it will seem greater than anyone you wanted before and yet less than anyone you may want in the future. Our own desires are a prison.
Words I Don't Remember represents potentially this year's most heartfelt love song - lines thrown out in a cursory fashion that encapsulate those woozy feelings: "Who knows if I love you baby, but you're the only one thing on my mind". As Krell builds his epic pop melodrama around us it feels like his is arriving at his core argument - what is this heart, this love anyway? Just so much biology and psychology - he seems to argue: I may not know what it is, but I know you're the one thing my mind rests on when it stops spinning like a top.
In between the hooks and pop songs What Is This Heart? suffers a slight lack of urgency in contrast the the rapid head rush of some of those stand-out moments. The deliberately naïvely titled Childhood Faith In Love (Everything Must Change, Everything Must Stay The Same) is exactly the rush of endorphins that title suggests. Precious Love, complete with its hold music sample is besotted but recreates a lovelorn 90s R&B aesthetic that is hard to resist. Similarly My Very Best Friend stalks a line somewhere between heartening and scary, so insistent are Krell's words of baby making and never being apart - a reflection of human emotion at its seemingly uncontrollably extreme. It once again calls to mind that album title, what is this heart?
What Is This Heart? is widescreen and grandiose and yet it still doesn't feel fully realised, a little brittle and whilst it attempts to create a concept album out of the focus on love it is a saccharine experience in one setting. At times raw and illuminating, at others a little confused and beguiling... Just like the heart then.
What Is This Heart? is out now, listen via sound cloud above.
Album Review: Late Night Tales presents After Dark 2: Nightshift - Bill Brewster
After Dark: Nightshift is the latest release from Late Night Tales stable and the second instalment from Bill Brewster under his After Dark banner. The first After Dark album came out a little over a year ago and focused on exactly what Brewster does well - carefully curated songs brought together to make you move. I wrote a brief summary of Brewster's history in that original review so I recommend checking it out if you want to know more.
Nightshift attempts to continue that journey with a fairly extensive 18-track selection that spans from Typesun through to Justus Köhncke via Emperor Machine. The whole point of these albums is the rareness of the tracks and the flow and journey of the album listening experience - the latter being something that isn't fully realised in the unmixed MP3 promo version I was supplied.
The first After Dark album cunningly weaved in a couple of rare mixes of tracks you may know but to my ear Nightshift doesn't have anything you are likely to have heard, making it a exploratory listen. Particularly in unmixed form, at 110-minutes, it feels a little overwhelming - something that is sure to be addressed in the shorter mixed form available once the album is released.
But Brewster knows his onions, and there are some gems to discover. Neurotic Erotic Adventure by the Neurotic Drum Band is a bizarre electronic funk disco number full of swirling disco strings and robotic voices. Day Outside's Faraway Sensation is a elastic Madchester sounding indie punk-funk shuffle. Not Yet Not Yet from Crowdpleaser & ST Plomb jiggles with an overtly confident strut, analogue bass and a swinging percussion line bumping up against funky synths as vocals pay tribute to a variety of classic tracks.
But it feels like for every strong cut there is another here that is filler. Köhncke's Tell Me is gloriously warm and starry-eyed, but it is bookended by relatively flabby moments in Asadinho's Haiku and Daniele Patucchi's People Come In... And these are just a couple of examples. Some of this is undoubtedly addressed by Brewster's DJ mixed version, but it begs the question why the version previewed is unmixed.
After Dark: Nightshift ends with General Lee's Magic, a swirling and psychedelic disco soul prog-rock track that is everything Brewster can deliver... Entrancing, surprising and beautiful. It's just a shame there wasn't more music here as surprising and enjoyable.
After Dark 2: Nightshift is out tomorrow, available to pre-order on CD and MP3 from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate links].
Stream: Waiting - FKJ feat. Madelyn Grant
It's Friday and it's hot and sunny. This track from FKJ's new EP Take Off, out 21 July on Roche Musique, should fit nicely. Enjoy!