Album Review: Two Words - Rain Dog

Rain Dog is one Samuel Evans and Two Words comes from his own desire for variation and the impact of disperate inspirational sources. Whilst Evans apparently never considered himself a conventional songwriter in the form of lyrics, here he attempts to blend more established and traditional elements of songwriting with cutting edge electronic production techniques.

Two Words' narrative comes from the structure and flow of the album rather than the snapshot and scattergun lyrics that pepper its length. Starting with foundational elements that inspire him - Tom Waits, Joni Mitchel, Ella Fitzgerald, old movies - Evans builds entirely new work from these samples.

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Two Words - Rain Dog

The album packs distinct tonal shifts against a consistently constructed dubstep styled context. Two Words is modern and urban, yet takes in that which is not. Opener Felicity, featuring Bigson, is theatrical and almost sounds like it belongs in a futuristic take on the classic musical number. Other moments are deeper and tighter - Broken's dub backing providing some heavy legwork for intense soulful vocals, capturing intense R&B that feels heightened as a result of the surrounding contrast.

Highly textured in nature, Rain Dog's music unfurls itself in front of the listener in ways that continue to feel unexpected. Watch Over's laid back vocals and jazzy piano keys unravel in a moment, catching the listener unaware with their unpredictable humanity. Two Words is compact and focused, containing moments of beauty and intrigue. And it's not a bad start to 2014 at all.

Two Words is out now on Project: Mooncircle, available from Amazon.co.uk on MP3 [affiliate link].

Album Review: Cupid Deluxe - Blood Orange

A lot of has changed since Dev Hynes changed things up, dropped his folky noodling Lightspeed Champion gig and moved to current nom de plume Blood Orange. Two years ago when Coastal Grooves dropped it felt like a weird kind of revolution... Sleazy 80s funk and prince references wedded to fuzzy lo-fi production, indie folk and math rock guitar work all thrown into an awkward, slightly geeky embodiment of wanting to get down and get off.

Since then indie R&B, or Pabst Rhythm & Blues if you read Vice and button your shirts all the way up, has exploded... And subsequently faded a little in lieu of the next big thing. Frank Ocean released the R&B album indie kids felt okay to like, and Miguel finally got some of the props he deserves. Meanwhile a slightly awkward British producer was busy creating one of the most hyped R&B EPs of the past few years on Solange's True, along with Sky Ferreira's Everything Is Embarassing and more recently working with the new old Sugababes, MKS, on their mildly hyped forthcoming material.

Exposure to Solange and the US market in general has clearly had a massive impact on Hynes. Both of True's best moments, the sultry Losing You and the swinging and gloriously titled second track Some Things Never Seem To Fucking Work were both glistening yet original takes on popular R&B. Good modern R&B should feel semi-robotic in my opinion, and here for the first time was Dev Hynes nailing it, yet somehow also breathing plenty of humanity into the sound - the rawness, those Knowles "Ooohs".

This is the album that really lets Dev Hynes fully realise his vision. Often cast as different, having undergone bullying and managed to be alienated by his own (moderately) successful band Test Icicles, Cupid Deluxe is like a lighter held aloft for the outsider in all of us. It's a highly androgynous album and at one point deals directly with the largely homeless LGBT scene in New York on Uncle Ace, named after the nickname given to the ACE subway line where many sleep in lieu of having anywhere else to go… Everything from the promo materials and artwork through to Hynes' own vocal delivery, often set in falsetto, talks to sexual uncertainly and there is a hint of loneliness to this. And yet the main theme of Cupid Deluxe, writ large across the bottom right corner of the cover, is love and longing. Whoever you are and whatever you are into we all have the need to share and be with others.  

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Cupid Deluxe - Blood Orange

Lead single Chamakay opens Cupid Deluxe with a level of polish and intensity Coastal Groove simply never reached. The tropical sounding production feels like a widescreen-curtain-up moment as Chairlift's Caroline Polachek drops sensual and emotionally heightened adlibs, the vocal sparring feeling hurt, desperate and bruised... It is hard not to feel caught up in their personal strife, such is the intimacy Hynes and Polachek create, and the playfully melodic bass and sax combo create a distinct 80s passion.

Hynes has managed to make his first album where pretty much every track feels like a single. Never Good Enough has the most gorgeous vocal hook and and boasts just how much his sound has moved on since Coastal Grooves. The jazzy ambience of Chosen feels like a spiritual ascent - your feet might just lift off the air - and the early 90s slink of Clipped On's rap from Despot is instantly catchy and infectious.

Cupid Deluxe is also incredibly deep and self-reverential, almost a concept album... Repeated listens reveal subtle references to other tracks either on the album or Hynes' other work. Was that the chord progression from Losing You on Uncle Ace, or just my imagination? And how did he get to the epicly lush, heavy heartbeat rhythms of closing ballad Time Will Tell, a track that is effectively a remix of It Is What It Is (also on this album). And it throws Coastal Grooves closing track Champagne Close into both Time Will Tell and there again, in the "Baby let me take you home" refrain from Closer. Cupid Deluxe feels almost dreamlike as a result - full of weird connections and references that make listening to it feel like time is being bent back on itself, your consciousness skipping around. Even long forgotten britpop band Mansun get a nod in the form of Always Let U Down, a track that is effectively either an ambitious cover or a remix (or both) of their 2000 release I Can Only Disappoint U.

This is one of the most ambitious and fascinating albums I've heard all year, and yet having lived with it for a week it already feels intense to listen to. Hynes' plays the victim of Cupid rather than his benefactor here - hurt by love rather than rewarded by it. Asking the subject of On The Line whether they are his, the uncertainty regarding the breakdown of a relationship potentially as bad as the break up itself. Hynes' main vocal refrain on Clipped On, a repeated "All I do is think about you, baby" is incessantly nagging yet beautiful, much like the face and memory that you suspect haunt him.

The caring (shared) vocals of It Is What It Is and Time Will Tell are perhaps the most love struck here - unconditionally offering reassurance "Time will tell if you can figure this and work it out, no-one's waiting for you anyway so don't be stressed out...", whilst Hynes' subsequent calls of "Come into my bedroom" seem dragged from his subconscious, betraying his feelings. It is a heartfelt and overwhelming conclusion to a staggering album that manages to feel thoroughly modern whilst speaking loudly to the timelessness of the human condition.

Cupid Deluxe is out on Monday through Domino. Available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 [affiliate links]. You can currently stream the album in full on YouTube.

Album Review: Butterfly Case - Cuushe

 Butterfly Case is Cuushe's second album, following on from Red Rocket Telepathy and the Girl You Know That I Am Here But The Dream EP, and it is out now on Japan's Flau label.

Cuushe is inspired by dreams and that is instantly obvious in the starry-eyed and dreamlike melodies. Fuzzy ambience, layers of melodic vocals and distortion form a dense sense of otherworldly desire. It gives the sense of being locked up in the sometimes forlorn, sometimes enraptured and ecstatic doodling and daydreaming of a teenager or the subject of a Wes Anderson or Sofia Copolla movie.

This tangibly emotional edge is never far for the surface, etched out in broad daylight on tracks such as I Love You, Swing Your Heart and I Miss You. When Cuushe is up the melodies are beautiful and uplifting, I Love You dizzy in an excitable and heady rush of bouncing synths, reverb and intense feelings of caring for someone that are delivered with a sense that they are tumbling out of her mouth simply because she can't hold them in any more. It is mirrored by the distraught and broken I Miss You - a track ice-like in sound, creaking like icebergs that move so slow whilst Cuushe deploys emotions through the tracks of her tears, obscured beneath the layers of production but still audibly hurting.

There are some more intensely upbeat moments too. The track Butterfly is a breathy and uplifting burst of energy that shines with driving bass lines and a catchy vocal hook, creating one of the album's most instantaneously pleasurable sugar hits.

It is the almost overbearing sense of the saccharine that holds Butterfly Case back if anything. Much like the movie directors she is likened to, Cuushe won't suit everyone's palate, the emotions too rich and the melodies too light to grab, yet it is hard not to love the dreamy naïveté she offers up.

Butterfly Case is out now on Flau. Available from Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 [affiliate links]. Spotify users can stream in full below: 

Album Review: Americana 2 - Various

  Americana 2 is the latest compilation from BBE and it celebrates some of the American folk and soul influenced sounds of the 1970s and 80s. I've not heard the previous album in this series and I'm not massively familiar with the blue eyed soul scene it ploughs, but there is a lot here to like.

The album has a sunny west coast vibe to match the soaring picture of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge that emblazons the cover. The laid back, highly polished take on soul feels particularly relevant to contemporary music, what with recent fetishisation of the west coast sound on Random Access Memories and the more California moments of Fleetwood Mac that inspire Haim. On the back of years of fascination with disco much of this album sits in a musical sweet spot - perfect for plundering. But BBE know their onions and you can be confident in the selection and intentions behind this album.

There is variety in sound here, but a coherent atmosphere that would make this the perfect soundtrack to long drives with the top down on sunny days... If only it wasn't October!

There are taught, disco numbers such as Breakaway's jiggy "There's A New Girl In Town", a track that feels like a seventies discoteque until precisely the moment a bold yet lethargic steely guitar solo kicks in after the third-minute. In comparison E.J. Stamp's "I Know All About It" is like the Eagles vocal harmonies applied to an upfront and assertive soul record - and that's a pretty glorious thing.

There's so much here that I've never heard before from artists I've never heard of that it is simpler to just recommend you check it out - if you like the premise, you'll probably like the album. However, some further highlights include Freudian Funk Band's frankly ridiculously but brilliantly titled "I'm Ambivalent About You Baby (Yes, Yes, Yes... No, No, No)", an epic put down that rolls on in a largely freestyle fashion to almost eight-minutes.

Also fantastic is the vocodered "You Win, I Lose" by Hal Bradbury, that actually sounds like what I would expect a Daft Punk track to sound like if they had made music in the 1970s, and has the kind of heartbreaking golden chorus you can't help but fall for... And TR's Hot Ice deliver something scratchy and weird that feels part punk-funk, part disco, all sunshine glory.

An album that pulls together some obscure gems from an under-appreciated style in a way that spans genres, Americana 2 is a sunshine holiday roadtrip in aural form.

Americana 2 is released on 11 November through BBE, available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD with AutoRip or MP3 [affiliate links].

Album Review: Dust Red Skies - Dust Red Skies

Enjoy! My channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/UFVibe

Dust Red Skies is the new self-titled album and collaboration from San Francisco based John Brian Kirby, who I've previously featured on BlackPlastic.co.uk in his Nonagon guise.

Yet this is a very different album to Days Away, The Nonagon album that I last heard from Kirby. Where that was an album that felt enjoyably lost in the left-field this is a more polished affair, not that Days Away lacked finesse. For starters, this is a partnership - so Kirby is joined by a vocalist in the form of Vibrasol's Angie Donkin, whose vocals grant this album a more human feel with a tangible emotional core. Donkin's vocals feel very much like the centre to these tracks - they are full and soar over some of these tracks to create a sparse feeling sound where the music creates auditorium's for her to sing in.

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Dust Red Skies

Which isn't to undermine the music itself. Kirby's productions glisten with little details - the subtle strumming of a guitar or crunchy rhythms that then at times endure the full-frontal assault of massive wobbly bass lines. But there is an undeniable accessibility to this music - it feels like in their collaboration Kirby and Donkin have tempered each other, and often the result is positive, as on the sparkling melodies and vocal harmonies of "Shadowless".

The sound Kirby is going for feels like dusty desert evenings of the near-future - there is almost a country feel to the songwriting itself and it feels like that is where the album's title comes from. It is reminiscent of Hybrid's more melodic vocal moments.

The only downside of this is that it feels a little like some of Kirby's rough edges have been worn down in the creation of this album. The production still impresses in it's technical ability, but it may not have quite the same verve when it is bound to supporting vocals so much of the time.

Dust Red Skies helps to demonstrate Kirby's enduring and varied talents if nothing else, and is well worth a listen. You can stream and purchase it on Bandcamp.