Author: Matt Oliver

Album Review: Dave Aju / ‘Heirlooms’ (Circus Company)

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★★★★☆

This would be tarred with the sleazy brush if it wasn’t so cheerily hard to resist and more than just a series of Frisco smut peddles. Dave Aju’s freaky funk has all the traits of a lounge lizard putting his best moves on you. “Ms Reposado” and “Caller #7” slink around the mic stand with flossy showmanship taking the stage, creating back orders on key-tars (falsetto on the latter, naturally) and party flavors made to last all night long.

It does help that tight deep housers compliment the song-and-dances. “All Together Now” is a tour de force, contested by “To Be Free” and its woozy groove cycles and provocative vocal slogans. Though following formula on “Away Away” and “Until Then” (the latter is a little more slo-mo disco, but the rules remain the same), Aju’s drowse with added mind/soul/body freestyling will become top priority for summer nights as he looks after you rather than tries to get into you head (or anywhere else). Starry, but not spangled, continued by the Parliament-ary “You Gotta Know” and Latin-swirled “Brown & Blue.”

Mixing up the Detroit Grand Pubahs recipe without oozing across the R&B intersections and resisting rash dancefloor temptations, if you’re after a free-spirited one-stop party album that knows when to both work and play, Heirlooms is heir to the throne.
File under: Detroit Grand Pubahs, Soul Clap, Nicolas Jaar

Album Review: Oscar G / ‘Beats’ (Nervous)

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★★★☆☆

Oscar G just wants you to get loose. Loose being the operative word, as long as asses are moving in the right direction. It’s not much to ask, and Gaetan isn’t holding a gun to your feet either, with crowd-gathering, tribal-tied grooves and tried and tested vocal prompts. “Music Takes Me Higher” and “Work” aren’t teaching funky green dogs new tricks, but the dance floor chase remains good enough. Toughened up beats are told to chill by Latin sections: “Agua Bendita” and “Play U Out” take the steam out of the situation by playing party-powering, tub-thumbing percussion with no need for over-elaborating — though an enormous fog horn and some passing cop car sirens will shake up the conga line.

Undeniably led by vibe, it’s all about letting the rhythm take you, stepping out of the club and onto the streets as per the clash of rustic and digital (“Cha Cha Cha” meeting both half way), though the humidity doesn’t change either side of the velvet rope. Twelve-minute jacker “Hypnotized” is classic to the core, showing Gaetan wants it all. You can keep your wild mood swings though – maybe it’s more close-knit than first thought…anyway, it’s a rock-solid selection.
File under: Murk, Masters at Work, Dennis Ferrer

Album Review: Ghosting Season / ‘The Very Last of the Saints’ (Last Night on Earth)

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★★★★☆

The agenda of Gavin Miller and Thomas Ragsdale would appear clear from the get-go; the Manchester UK duo treat the mixing desk like a Ouija board. The band name, the ghoulish sleeve, titles such as “Far End of the Graveyard” and “A Muffled Sound of Voices”… the spirits have been disturbed. But while restless, no poltergeists throwing furniture across the room are invited here. Deep house with an icy twitch gives admiring glances to atmospheric dubstep in a fine interchange, marking an album with a wispy presence and offering plentiful reassurances despite the subzero temperatures and drawing of knife edges.

Humble and humbling, at times bracing for something so frail and always keeping a cool head when elements around get keyed up and so much seems at stake, the potential of plentiful visual tie-ins comes quickly as Ghosting Season turn themselves into mood music apparitions. The inserts of acoustic guitar are another natural fit, as on the reflective “13,” the beatless dialogue “Lie” and “Lost at Sea” mulling over its next move, but only lock onto the likes of “Time Without Question” if your mindstate is correctly set. Achieving house music pleading for forgiveness at the DJ booth or having you walk into the strobes as if the mothership is calling, the delights of its economical, effective daunting will doubtless draw you in.
File under: worriedaboutsatan, Burial, Pantha du Prince

Album Review: Slugabed / ‘Time Team’ (Ninja Tune)

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★★★★☆

Greg Feldwick has cleaned his act up, kind of literally. Having started making dents in playlists and skulls with glitchy bass backfires and pixel-pocked electro, the Bath, England-based producer has steadily developed a sound of greater sparkle, allowing for an easier flow down the ear canal. In the throes of bass music engineering entrancement at the other end of the sound bed, his debut album is of clear visions, softer focussd projections (with room for the heartbreaking, “Sex” elevates to the spiritual from the assumed physical) and positive tingles of ambition that prompt gratification.

Time Team paints the future as imposing, but not as something to be feared. “All This Time” is enchanting, spearheading a quartz-anchored cruise passing electro calculator funk (“Travel Sweets,” “Grandma Paints Nice”), imperial encounters (“Dragon Drums”) and halo-polishing rave (“Mountains Come Out of the Sky”). “Moonbeam Rider” is a momentary backstep toward Slugabed’s glitch-hop facing an end of level b-boy baddie, presented as a different, denser area to explore rather than the typical fantasy stumbling upon the wrong side of the tracks.

Joining those stepping into the synthesized hyperreal, Slugabed conceives an illuminating quest where the thrill ride is structured so you don’t miss a thing, and the hectic flashes of activity are delivered with precision mechanisms and basslines gulping at the 8-bit multiplications.
File under: Lone, Jam City, Rustie