Reviews

Album Review: Luca Lozano / ‘Life in Black and White’ (Klasse Recordings)

Matt Oliver Leave a Comment

Luca Lozano Life in Black and Whitejpg

★★★☆☆

Luca Lozano patiently travels with an unassuming gait as daylight dwindles, the ex-Zombie Disco Squadian presenting closing time beats and diet dub ambling into jazz and disco downs. The mood is mild to say the least, Lozano resisting anything fiery by spinning from the corner of your dining room, effectively minding his own business (the Gallic trip-hop perch of “Chaki Zulu”) while you host guests and make idle chitchat. Once you’ve upped and left, Lozano will still be spinning, making use of the fading light, though attempts to get under your skin with the likes of “Lunch with Mr Ho” and “Need Nothing” doing cosmic disco with the blinds down, more often than not meekly scratch at the surface.

“Tombstone,” a folk-gothic hip-hop instrumental, is a necessary change of scenery, only slightly marred by the S’Express sample tacked onto the end, and “Layer Conveyer” is a groove through the gears, finding wistful house that’s refined while in a busier mood. The emergence of “In This World But Not Of It” suggests Lozano is done being a night owl and his sprightlier house mood wants to tackle a new day, helping advance the prevalent playing of a waiting game and showing the album isn’t a complete nobody. Therefore, easy to slip on to give the room some noise and shape without your brain having to fire — which might not sound like much, but sometimes is all you need.

File under: DJ Cam, Pablo Nouvelle, Portico Quartet

Album Review: Small Pyramids / ‘Slow It Down’ (Glasgow Underground)

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SMALL-PYRAMIDS-SLOW-IT-DOWN

★★★☆☆

Zach Hunsaker’s cosmic disco and boutique deep house ease downs face a quandary. That definition of cosmic becomes overstated when having lead you to a slow dance in the sand as the sun dips South, its idyllic perspective starts to become merely everyday. Of course it has mass appeal available by being a club-lounge segue that isn’t blaring garishly, and always leaves you warm and relaxed. Nicely managed vocal switch-ups — “Look No Further” utilizing Dennis Edwards, the pianos of “I’m Gonna Beg You” measuring an interpretation of Smokey Robinson — settle into soft pastel shades with an effervescent border framing picture postcard scenery.

Upon chugging in the same direction at a pace where weights are placed around its calves — this is less a Baywatch sequence, more a loved-up, LA race through treacle — the wonder of the sweet electro-R&B influenced harmonies can fizzle. Its after-hours attributes are the preserve of the nitpicker — “Stranded” is an anonymous blueprint of paradise, waving at ambient compilations from its deserted locale, but does come in welcoming, spa-projected orange hues. Hunsaker doesn’t aim to establish an identity, or whip around the dance floor; conversely, he deals solely in vibe, has titles speaking for themselves, and is wise enough not to force the issue so as to let magic naturally materialize.

As likely to send you straight to bed over prolonging the party, Hunsaker just about wins, twice over, by easing down and along a fine line.

File under: Kris Menace, No Regular Play, Mark E

Album Review: Murphy Jax / ‘Teleport: Echo City’ (Chiwax)

Matt Oliver Leave a Comment

Murphy Jax Teleport Echo City

★★★★☆

The spirit of ’88 lives strong, the clean, acid-dropped sound of original house is in season, and the heeding of promised lands and requests from baby to ride show where Murphy Jax’s head has been at for all these years.

As beats beam in a crux of keyboards, in no way should this be deemed cheesy, even when reaching further back to starship trooper disco on “Conrad’s Time Machine.” As the Berliner sells himself as a renaissance man for synth-strobe guidance and doughty drum machines giving the future a made-to-last guarantee, when “Empire Without End” and “We and The Machines” take on all decades, MJ becomes enduringly influential, twofold.

If have made your peace with the record being a spangled throwback, the startle of Euro techno steamroller “Dark the Dancer” will have you promoting the protagonist to all-rounder status, and acid toughening “Funksquelch” repositions you in an army-style crawl. Handclap jacks hit the gutter as the distinctive pump of the album’s glamour moves between pleasuredome (see the balladry of “Odyssey of Endless Hope”) and dingy bolthole. About the only thing missing is a lyrical accompaniment; there’s scarcely an unsubtle/subliminal drug promotion, suggestive breathing pattern, bid to free your mind or king’s speech on who’s house you should have jacked in to be found.

Zomby’s hardcore homage Where Were U in 92? becomes a comparison. Beyond epochal worship or knowing retro is always on-trend, it’s a new set of sounds superlatively re-piecing together all of yesterday’s parties.

File under: Mike Dunn, Legowelt, Terry Farley

Album Review: The Field / ‘Cupid’s Head’ (Kompakt)

Matt Oliver Leave a Comment

The Field Cupid's Head

★★★★☆

Bowled over, lurching towards danger, a thrillseeker slash foolhardy dancefloor voyager, The Field will not excuse himself for kissing the sky. Unflinchingly long and straightforward synth lines unfurl to take over stadia at a canter. A trance distillation lacks none of the genre’s powers of affirmation. Duplication unto infinity scuba-dives for pearls of dream house and cerebral techno, until its natural, unfettered drift takes it into shark infested waters.

Spread over a mere six tracks means Axel Willner works the headswims so their pendulous swirls place you on their path to ascension, if not always enlightenment. The title track hazes up and down through a loop trigger marking an uncertainty between fantasy and reality, and “No No” is a dramatic triumph of reshaping El-P’s “Stepfather Factory.” Provocative with the most scant of tools, an almost academic prowess is found rounding up a troupe of fallen angels.

The sweet “Black Sea,” keeping with the aquatic analogies, happily laps up the waves before, without warning, something sharp starts nipping at it from below. After spending the album’s majority perched on an exalted pasture, proceedings are moved from open air chill out to gasping techno asylum on a two-for-one deal.

Considering the Swede overcame a degree of writer’s block to get this album underway and still dices with production genius and everything fortunately falling into place, his maintenance of control keeps cool when under pressure, and more importantly, makes the ever-steady interesting and inspirational.

File under: DJ Koze, Loops of Your Heart, Walls