Reviews

Album Review: Scrimshire / ‘Bight’ (Wah Wah 45s)

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Scrimshire Bight Wah Wah 45s

★★★★☆

Not quite a spicy melting pot, not quite a slow cooker, Adam Scrimshire’s third LP is bound by the open air. A diarist to a day of road trips, campfire closures, a spot of impromptu partying, and facing forks in the road, his is a free spirit that enjoys taking and taking on a little piece of everything.

The singer-songwriter nudges the cusp of coastally-placed comfort, after nature’s course has lead him to louder climes. Indie pop and trip hop, put into down-looking-up and happy to be jaded categories, would appear to be at Scrimshire’s analogue/organic base, as folk strummings that lead to a hazy, surf’s down air and imagining post-dubstep from afar (“Convergent,” “Siren”) branch out yet stay supportive. It’s here where the album, close-knit in its creations, evolves out of sight, writing out a checklist of places to see and things to do, mixing up male and female vox, linking impassioned performance and above-a-whisper insights.

On Scrimshire travels, a touch of blue grass house on “Corporeal” giving the idea of a travelling band, also telling of the live element his convoy effect. Coming to rest at the cinematic and the ambient though always seems to be the album’s most gratifyingly natural path. Of long and winding wind-beaten roads, “No More” makes a case for audiovisual assignment, and “Kindle a Fire” makes as much sense as an intermission of glowing embers. Pack your bindle and press play.

File under: Morcheeba, Hidden Orchestra, Skeletons

Album Review: Gold Panda / ‘Half of Where You Live’ (Ghostly International)

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Gold Panda Half of Where You Live

★★★★☆

Bright eyed and bushy tailed, dieting on synth cycles streaming and straining to be first past the finishing line, it’s a rare occasion where you can find a Panda behaving with an upright, inquisitive vivacity as it commutes. The student from the School of Asian and African Studies all the while appreciates house and dance electronics that can run as a compact travelogue from a position on the couch, showing there’s no place like home.

Developing the shades of Lucky Shiner into neon colors that won’t sting your eyeballs, GP’s crafty implementing of international features turn holiday slides 3D; the chimes to “Junk City” bring a vision of Asia without plastering it in Kanji, and the new age traveller “Brazil” just loops a chant as means of sightseeing commentary. Maximalism as altruism, with a supple, soft-sided urgency, takes hustle and bustle in its stride.

From an electronic standpoint, Panda doesn’t go rustic when slipping outside of the bright lights, opting instead to detune indigenous instruments on “We Work Nights” to keep on city slicking. Off the gas, “My Father in Hong Kong 1961” and the meek tumbler “S950” see commotion lapse, stepping back to appreciate nuances and finer points of the vista at large. “Flinton” and “Enoshima” allow themselves a little homesickness with neat and precise electronic evocation continuing to show Gold Panda in a bold, assertive light that contrarily, exhibits an understated personality that just wants other to share in his sunshine.

File under: Caribou/Four Tet, Shlohmo, Joy Orbison

Compilation Review: Gregor Schwellenbach / ‘Spielt 20 Jahre Kompakt’ (Kompakt)

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Spielt 20 Jahre Kompakt

★★★★☆

A daring orchestral, regressive vision remix project quite within its right to fly over heads, going beyond the conductor’s baton with rustic chamber house and solemnly threadbare instrumental pieces from the king’s quarters, a band of bewigged players and radicals upholding pomp and ceremony. Scholarly composer Schwellenbach strips back and time travels Kompakt favourites; if you’re not familiar with the source material, it’s an experience to imagine the angular German label taken back to days of yore or tracing its family tree with re-arrangements penned on parchment. Of course, it’s also an extension of the label finding new, gimmick-avoiding ways to rest on the ever prized cutting edge.

With a reputation for audiovisual theatre, wide open spaces let emotions run high from low. Schwellenbach alone with his piano can be a stirringly sparse spectacle, if you’re open minded enough to give these as-one scale-downs time to resonate. Closer Musik’s “Maria” and the pulsating “Departures,” Gui Boratto’s “No Turning Back,” Voigt & Voigt’s “Vision 03” and Saschienne’s “La Somme” are among those prescribed darkened room solace. Out of the dramatically raw and acoustically taut, Schwellenbach’s attention to detail rouses an equally humbling, firefly mystique, with Jonas Bering’s “Melanie” telling of unrequited love.

Charming in opposition are the lo-fi house trundles playing at a bards-only disco; Oxia’s “Domino” even formulates an ornate euphoria, while Voigt & Voigt’s “Gong Audio” will leave raving playwrights and campanologists parched. A work of art unconcerned whether heads get it.

File under: Michael Mayer, Wolfgang Voigt, Gui Boratto

Album Review: Luke Solomon / ‘Timelines’ (The Classic Music Company)

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Luke-Solomon-Timelines

★★★☆☆

After a compilation and alter ego LP within the last year, Luke Solomon is on the grind again. Whether because he has remixers in support to inspire him, or is just using another album as another mood, Solomon flies free in his dance floor crossings dominated by vocal collaborations. The big room takeovers feature song structured swing and an informal pop preponderance.

Solomon reaches out and away from fixed house and techno conceptions, bearing the lanky, geeky “Not Coming Home” and “Hey Giorgio” blurring back to the disco, as the album also contrasts long with quicker fixes. The husky road-tripper “Gods and Monsters” is a little more predictable with its guitar edge, though it’s suiting to a deep strutting Waifs & Strays remix shows timely backups are in place for any rare missteps. As an aside, Ewan Pearson actually arrives with no original to partner, his mix of “Lonely Dancer” somewhat confusing the remit. A better six stringer is to be found when “Let’s Bleed…” sets off on a big twanger of a riff, on an indie-dance free-for-all spooned from the same melting pot as carnival concern “Say Something.”

In turn, this huddles up with “Heading for a Breakdown” and “We Go” — fresh, Latin-zested runs within a minimal techno appraisal. The same DNA comes together on the more expressly Chicago “Interceptor”, with Solomon’s sound, based around but not confined to the club, consistently interesting by not fitting the bill.

File under: The Digital Kid, Hot Chip, David August