Reviews

Album Review: Kölsch / ‘1977’ (Kompakt)

Matt Oliver Leave a Comment

kolsch 1977

★★★☆☆

On potentially the biggest EDM LP of the year, Kölsch practises stadium scales as a keyboard lesson warm-up, taking further liberties when the breakdowns to “Bappedekkel” and “Loreley” seem to be played left-handed. If you’re pro chemical reactions under the sun, 1977 is a year you’ll always remember. If you break down the mechanics, it’s just another EDM album from someone who isn’t plastered all over MTV.

This is surely forthcoming, given the Swedish House Mafia/Armin van Buuren-like “All That Matters”, the album’s only vocal track. European rule bakes the LP with a thin cheese crust, giving you a stereotyped cultural appendix to an EDM/trance step-by-step. Reference points are obvious throughout, loading 8-bits many a time, reigniting the spirit of “Strings of Life” on “Der Alte”, though a good piano track will never go out of fashion. Tunnel rusher “Basshund” firms up a Mylo pressure drop, “Zig” & “Loreley” have posters of Xpansions and Southside Spinners on their wall, and “Eiswinter’s” dirt bike bass, the one-time Kölsch swishes about in the gutter, rides dirty to Hervé’s “Better than a BMX.”

Defending Kölsch, his sound is allowed to generate and find a way rather than immediately look for the payoff, making the ensuing pyrotechnics, shall we say, slightly less silicone-based. While swinging the keys to a church of easy access euphoria, it’s a small token to bear in mind when you’ve written him off into the EDM flock.

File under: Gui Boratto, Benny Benassi, Tiësto

Album Review: Dinky / ‘Dimension D’ (Visionquest)

Matt Oliver Leave a Comment

dinky_dimension_d

★★★☆☆

Like a hooded folk drifter scaling scenery kissed by snowflakes, playing on and away from a role of fable maker, Dinky’s all-seeing, all-knowing persona does girly without the coating of everything in sugar.

As she takes the mic like she’s holding a crystal ball, the Chilean takes the forbidden path less travelled (that has routed her to New York and Berlin) on “Xanex.” The craw-sticking bass and claw fingered pop status makes her a threat in miniature, though the la-la-las on the chorus make you wonder what possible harm should could do, especially with “La Noche” whispering secrets in another tongue. With conviction and impetus, she goes for a shot of stimulation on the title track approach to broken beat-house, regaling the dance floor with her fortune telling exhalations. “Falling Angel” continues with alt-pop/club themes and soft summons in alchemy, the vocal here taking on a gentle sparkle waging an energy transfer between Alison Goldfrapp and Stevie Nicks.

The remaining folk and electronics meander into an organic yet digital steadiness of ship. Siren of the sea “Witches” watches shooting stars pass while buttons are pushed and lights blink: Dinky’s first show of vulnerability, immediately replaced by a moll in elbow length silk gloves as “Blind” enjoys a switch-up of blasé funk that extends into a purring, stretching kitten on deep house routine “Almonds.” Drowsy, dry, and as a good a sleep aid as pre-bedtime cocoa.

File under: Deniz Kurtel, Ellen Allien, Zap Mama

Album Review: Ikonika / ‘Aerotropolis’ (Hyperdub)

Matt Oliver Leave a Comment

Ikonika Aerotropolis

★★★★★

When you’re buying your next flying car, as historians have long predicted you eventually will, Ikonika will be bringing your vision to life and congratulating you on your purchase with a delivery of the far future right to your doorstep. Operating an ’80s electro/R&B swing that rolls its sleeves up, both in fashion (“Mr. Cake”) and graft, Sara Abdel-Hamid effortlessly connects grime subterfuge, maximalist parameters and ringtone investment (“You Won’t Find It There”). Her swooping out of polygon palaces, (“Eternal Mode”) flies with a faint purple hue, lining its golden curves made out of refracting straight lines.

Any malevolence is carried out in a utopia where violence isn’t so much a concept — you’re probably not even allowed to swear, Demolition Man-style – but hostilities are applied by digging down with the same hollowed out, tubular tools. Regulated by a robotic-armed conveyor belt, humans have long been driven out of the area, made to flee through the sleeve’s computer-designed maze, “Mega Church” boasting a 100% success rate when it comes to failed breakouts. Ikonika’s brave new world slides down the temperature gauge using sleight of hand and tricks of the light; “Backhand Winners” puts insubordinates in the firing line of a grand slam schemer, and “Manchego” uses a console converter to produce joypad grime in tune with original Chicago house.

Putting meat on bones — the key to the album’s success — Ikonika turns her crystal tips into burning spears and icicle keys into finger blistering platters. Absorbing.

File under: Rustie, Kode9, XXYYXX

Album Review: Yonderboi / ‘Passive Control’ (Yonderland)

Matt Oliver Leave a Comment

Yonderboi Passive Control

★★☆☆☆

He has the name of an alternative superhero; his powers number conducting solidly-built electronica, a folk-cored sensitivity going over trip hop strums, and punk-ish dance with a feel for widescreen dub. Finding the middle of the road most comfortable, even when at its most dynamic, Yonderboi follows his own shadow and is not one to be swinging from skyscrapers.

Though you can only wheel up dub and folk so far until you’ve veered way off course, rustic attempts at integrating dubstep on “Paint Hunting on the Wall” and “Mono de Oro,” laden with old-world acoustics and melodies, show an ear for dance that’s expansive yet somehow still tentative. Attempting this crossover/synergy isn’t hyperextending to make opposites attract, but counterparts get jammed together without really getting to know one another. Electro-breaker “Brighter Than Anything” isn’t helped by a vocal from Yonderboi’s internet find Charlotte Brandi that falls into the same trap of the unadventurous.

The album’s high points are the freedom-seeking soundtrack quality of “Inexhaustible Well” and the strings of impassioned pop plea “Come On Progeny,” both of which will bring down the burliest warrior. Bookended by monologues that are at odds with one another and the feature presentation they frame, the Hungarian’s problem is all in its title; regardless of ideas of fusion and the obvious studio enhancements at his disposal to lift a folk template, it’s an album that ambles into short-termism before it becomes forgotten.

File under: Bonobo, Rockers Hi-Fi, Gotan Project