EP Review: I Can't Figure You Out - Hugh

Joshua Idehen seems to be everywhere at the moment, having also just announced his new album with LV, Islands, a follow up to 2011's Routes... I Can't Figure You Out is the debut EP from Hugh, one of Idehen's many projects, this time the result of a chance meeting with fellow London musician Andy Highmore in a bar.

The two uncovered a shared appreciation a number of disperate musical influences - the dreamy sun-kissed reverb of Beach House, the uniquely British sound of Soul II Soul, the vocal harmonies of Grizzly Bear. If it is difficult to imagine what these things sound like together now, it won't be once you have heard I Can't Figure You Out.

Now joined by guitarist Martin 'Tino' Kolarides and vocalist Izzy Brooks, Hugh feel very much a complete and well prepared band. Each of the four tracks here stands out in its own right. On Charlie both Idehen and Brooks pine for a friend or lover led astray, a tribute to the kind of unconditional love that is incapable of fading. Alongside this the music sways, a breezy easy-going soul matched up with a warm deep house bounce.

I Can't Figure You Out is every bit as potent as when Hugh posted it (and I shared it) last month. It's a dreamy, spellbound maze of emotions - longing, lust and confusion - with Brook's vocals captivating and the dramatic production lending the song the life-or-death sensibility it sets out to invoke. On Not Fair Too Far the bass and rhythms provide some earthly humanity in contrast to the fluttering heart beats of layered of warm syncopated, staccato melodies. Again, another track about confused emotions and the need for clarity and someone trust-worthy - ironic given the uncomplicated dedication of the EP's opening.

As if in response to that contrast I Can Be Your Light feels like the completion of the square - a song of utter devotion. In contrast to the rest of the EP it feels just a touch thin, almost over-produced, but the vocals and piano playing are sublime. The tentative arrival of Izzy's vocal, seemingly out of nowhere on the word 'window' but actually there gently building courage over the preceding lines, feels like a metaphor for the push and pull of real love. Give a bit and trust the other person reciprocates, pull back and see if they come forward... But just don't play those silly games.

If I Can't Figure You Out is anything to go by Hugh wear their heart on their sleeves - this is an EP that talks of little more than the complexity and range of human emotional attraction. It does so with enough honesty to make it feel fresh, and style to make it feel irresistible.

If I Can't Figure You Out is out now, listen below on Soundcloud:

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].

Available on: iTunes - http://smarturl.it/Liminal CD - http://smarturl.it/cdliminal Double Vinyl - http://smarturl.it/lpliminal www.wearetheacid.com

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.

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What Is This Heart? - How To Dress Well

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].

EP Review: Bengali Cinema - Garden City Movement

Bengali Cinema unravels in the mind like a moment of semi-consciousness unfurling oneself from a hotel bed into the gorgeous yet alien and distant morning sun.

Threesome Garden City Movement hail from Tel Aviv and they create warm Mediterranean dub step full of adobe-like roughly-sculpted edges and sun-drenched halos that encircle the melodies with a fizzy energy. The trio all carry out multiple roles within the band - Johnny Sharoni handling samplers, percussion and vocals; Roi Avital keyboards, guitars, loops and vocals and Yoav Saar keyboards, samplers and guitar. That list should give some sense of the swirl that makes up the four tracks on this EP, lots of detail embellished with more detail for effect.

Bengali Cinema opens with Terracotta, a track that sounds like something Gold Panda left out in the sun until it got tired, emotional and struggled to move. Garden City Movement manage to simultaneously impart a sense of kinaesthesia within their music and yet also provide it with a thick, tangible sense of inertia… The detail in Terracotta moves quickly, but the emotions are dragging at our heels, drawing us back to moments from our past - loved ones and half-remembered times.

The somewhat endearing morbidity continues, with Love + Loss dealing with similar sensations of regret amidst warm and mellow sounds. A gently picked guitar and record player crackle open the track Lir, capturing all the dreamy Ballearic sunshine you could want and blending it into a gorgeously slow track that gently scatters itself in front of you.

The title track is the most overtly song-like moment on the EP, vocals seeking a way to escape with another. It is a beautifully cloying record - granting the sense we’d be having fun if we could just stop questioning what that even means. Garden City Movement have been likened to Friendly Fires, that thinking man’s emotive indie-house band, and it is all here in the slightly sunburnt and paranoid moments of pop… Which is to say I can’t quite get enough.

Bengali Cinema is the soundtrack for moments trapped in paradise, a holiday wished away on being home. It is never less than gorgeous, and yet it sounds like Sharoni, Avital and Saar all miss something else far more. A warm embrace and a little rain to go and walk in perhaps. Until then they will have to keep lounging by the pool and pretending to like it. 

Bengali Cinema is out now through BLDG5, available from Amazon.co.uk on MP3 [affiliate link]. Stream the EP on Soundcloud below:

Garden City Movement - Bengali Cinema EP 'Bengali Cinema', out 23.6 exclusively on BLDG5 Records. Pre Order Garden City Movement - Entertainment / Bengali Cinema (LP) DELUXE limited edition (300) ,Special colored vinyl http://smarturl.it/bengali-cinema-order Follow Garden City Movement www.facebook.com/GardenCityMovement twitter.com/gardencitymove Follow BLDG5 Records www.facebook.com/bldg5 www.bldg5records.com www.twitter.com/BLDG5Records