EP Review: WHOWILLLUVU - Frenchfire

WHOWILLLUVU is a haunting and emotive tech-house record that crafts feeling out of layered female vocals and an insistent synth melody. It feels more influenced by dubstep and Burial as anything produced within the confines of the house genre, granting it sense of isolation and urban sadness. The melodies resemble steel drums and it feels like a downtrodden and depressed reimagining of Jamie XX's uplifting Far Nearer. It is positively boiling over with pent up emotion.

Alongside the original is a mix for Lithuania's Vidis. His mix stays very much in keeping with the intent of the original, but with a slightly lifted pace and a greater focus on the rhythm track. That vocal still creates the main focus though, and the remix is just as good as the original.

WHOWILLLUVU is out now on Biologic, available from Amazon.co.uk on MP3 [affiliate link]. Check out a preview of the original in the Soundcloud player below or listen to the whole Vidis remix on YouTube:

Listen to Frenchfire - Whowillluvu [Preview] by Biologic Records | Explore the largest community of artists, bands, podcasters and creators of music & audio.

SOFTLY SYSTEMATIC Taste is the only factor. Quality is the only limit. Support the artist: ◊ FREnchfire https://www.facebook.com/FREnchfiremusic https://soundcloud.com/frenchfire ◊ Vidis https://www.facebook.com/vidisofficial https://soundcloud.com/vidis Download: https://soundcloud.com/vidis/flux No copyright infringement intended. Video will be removed if requested by the copyright owner.

EP Review / Stream: Fauve - Floral Fauna

Written and produced by Floral Fauna. Release Date: February 10th, 2014

Fauve is the new release out next week through Better On Foot that features duo Floral Fauna. Formed in Baltimore last September after street musician Ony teamed up with Rhodes player Rob Fontana.

With a focus on improvisation Floral Fauna produce tracks inspired by disco and jazz. The EP's name, Fauve, is a reference to Fauvism, a period of expressionism within art where artists took to vibrant strokes and colours to convey feelings rather than realism.

Fauve is a fitting description for this EP that paints more in mood than in the literal medium of lyrics. The vocals on Visions sound like they have been gently placed atop the music rather than imprinted on it - the improvised sense of this music suggests the moments, rhythm and melody are more important than the contents.

Lift It is similarly casual, the vocals reverberating around a staggered chord sequence that gives the track a gentle tumbling sensation. Final track Mysteries plays with heavy vibes whilst the vocals take the foreground for once, the hook detailing a timid lover struggling to come forth and declare his affection.

There is a relaxed playful experimentation to this music that reminds me of a more soulful and disco-influenced version of Cody Chestnutt's cult classic debut album The Headphone Masterpiece. In other words, there is a lo-fi, sexy effortlessness to Fauve that is hard to resist. Particularly on that last track.

Kevin Yost has been a supported and so the EP includes a deep house remix of Visions. Textually Yost takes the track to a wholly different place, the record full of ambience and shuffling beats in place of the original's raw sass, but it provides a crisp reimagining that fits with the mood of the EP.

Fauve is released on 24 February through Better On Foot and is available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on MP3 [affiliate link]. Listen to Visions on Soundcloud above.

Album Review: Banshee - Kendra Morris

I recently covered Kendra Morris as part of my overview of artists I'm tipping for big things in 2014, 2014 Hype. Much like East India Youth, Morris is another artist getting things out early in the year, with her album Banshee set for release next Monday.

Banshee is a break-up record, these songs crafted in the period that followed Morris' break-up as, in her words,  “it’s just so much easier to put a feeling to a note”. The result is a record that takes in a little funk, a little soul and a little blues. There is a clear hip-hop influence here, both in terms of the slight cut-and-paste feel of production that permeates the album and in some of the subject matter - lead single Concrete Wave dealing with the risk / reward thrill of skateboarding, for example.

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Banshee - Kendra Morris

Morris' vocal delivery is difficult to argue with - the frequent use of overdubbing means it is a somewhat brassy execution, yet it suits the songs themselves well. On the whole this a set of bold and assertive pieces, tracks like Spitting Teeth holding no punches in portraying Morris as a lady who is prepared to get her hands dirty.

Which isn't to say Morris doesn't have a voice - the more soulful tracks where the instrumentation taks a half-step back allow her to open up. These turn out to be some of Banshee's most memorable moments - If You Didn't Go's resignated acceptance feels personal in a way some of the other tracks here can't. Similarly, Here switches between hurt Rhodes based gospel blues to emphatic and pleading big soul choruses. It is the best of both worlds, the space letting the verses breath before all that power is unleashed, and marks the album's standout moment.

Banshee is an intricately produced album - almost to the extent that the production gets in the way and feels a little too much. But there is no denying that Morris knows a tune, and all that production work certainly lends proceedings some energy - I wouldn't want to be Morris' next love, because if they step out of line Banshee just might kick their ass.

Banshee is out on 10 February through Naive Records. Available for order from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affilaite links].

EP Review: If Loving U Is Wrong, I Don't Want To Be Wrong - Lockah

Fresh off of the back of releasing one of last year's best albums (Nonfiction by The Range), Donky Pitch kick start their 2014 with this storming EP from Lockah. The ironically titled If Loving U Is Wrong, I Don't Want To Be Wrong presents two original tracks as a prelude to Lockah's forthcoming album Yahoo or the Highway, and it follows up on last year's Only Built 4 Neon Nites EP.

Both the original tracks are presented in Lockah's usual style - a smear of pop across a grimey background of Miami bass. There are plenty of his usual rave-antics packed into this EP and it is suitably starry-eyed and uplifting.

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Lockah, credit: Dean Gray

The EP's title track is a flurry of pitched vocals, rave piano and old school drum patterns that come together to create something totally in love with the optimism of early 90s dance but still noticeably contemporary. Ayyo Tricknology is similarly positive but focuses on a little bit of a more up-to-date, bass orientated sound, with plenty of echo and bounce creating a chunky rhythmic track.

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If Loving U Is Wrong, I Don't Want To Be Wrong - Lockah

Both tracks come with a dub version. If Dubbing U Is Wrong, I Don't Want To Be Wrong loses the pitched vocal and instead focuses on tight drum patterns and scratching to create a track for the beat heads. Ayyo Bonus Beats is similarly rhythm obsessed, stripping out the synths to create a tightly wound drum track.

It is all further evidence that Nonfiction was no fluke - thankfully we only need to wait until April to hear their next full length offering.

If Loving U Is Wrong, I Don't Want To Be Wrong is out on 17 February through Donky Pitch. It will be available through Amazon.co.uk on MP3 [affiliate link]. Listen to the title track on Soundcloud below:

Listen to Lockah - If Loving U Is Wrong, I Don't Want To Be Wrong (12" Edit) by Lockah | Explore the largest community of artists, bands, podcasters and creators of music & audio.

Album Review: Total Strife Forever - East India Youth

William Doyle is East India Youth and he is another artist currently on my 2014 list of artists to get hyped about... Only unlike the others, he's already dropped an album this year: Total Strife Forever.

Doyle has graduated into semi-concept album territory on Total Strife Forever. Having previously fronted folky indie diversion Doyle & The Fourfathers there was an understandable expectation that he would create an album of songs. Instead what we have is the debut album from his new identity, East India Youth. Doyle has taken inspiration from his own burgeoning musical maturity, formed hanging out in London's strangely clinical yet industrial docklands district East India.

Total Strife Forever - East India Youth

Total Strife Forever isn't an album of songs. It borrows from the approach of David Bowie's Berlin trilogy, mixing instrumentals amongst songs to create a cinematic, almost soundtrack-like flow to the album. The Berlin trilogy were famously produced by Brian Eno, and his same influence looms as large here over it did on one of 2013‘s best albums - Jon Hopkins' Immunity. And now Eno allegedly turns up to check out East India Youth concerts.

The album's title is an intriguing riff on Foals' Total Life Forever that attempts to capture the sense of overwhelming stress that consumed Doyle when making this album. He concedes that naming your album after a contemporary and successful band may be a mistake but seems determined to set himself obstacles and then effortlessly smash them down. That title itself is applied to four instrumentals that punctuate the album like fizzy intakes of breath, and they form much of the structure.

There is an interesting thing happening within this style of electronic music - it feels more reserved than the kind of music that normally attempts to expand out from electronic music. There is a clear crossover potential here, yet as with Hopkins, a brave purity in the album's more electronic moments. This isn't an overtly polluted take on electronic music. Hinterland is intense yet minimal, an extended breakdown and crescendo that comes ready-made for dance floors... Yet feels destined to spill out beyond them.

Yet mixed in with all this technology is a so much humanity. Dripping Down is an optimistic and hymn-like piece that mirrors the confused loneliness of Looking For Someone. The greatest realisation of Boyle's attempts to blend thinking with feeling comes on the somewhat staggering Heaven, How Long - a six-minute long Krautrock track that feels intimate yet epic. It is a jewel in a somewhat marvellous debut album.
 
Total Strife Forever is out now, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 [affiliate links]. Listen on Spotify below: