Thursday 17 February 2011

Isolee: 'Well Spent Youth'

A review I wrote for FACT magazine. View the original here.

Dance albums are strange beasts. Producers often walk a tightrope between stringing together a chain of recognisable, club-friendly anthems and taking advantage of the artistic scope that the format offers. One man who has succeeded at this balancing act twice is Rajko Müller, a.k.a Isolee, the German producer who had a devastating impact on the house scene with ‘Beau Mot Plage’, a heady cocktail of francophile guitars and featherweight synths that still sounds as exotic and seductive today as it did thirteen years ago. He followed it up with the seminal Rest in 2000, and his second long-player We Are Monster, certified his reputation in Europe’s house and techno scenes, while garnering him fans from outside that sphere.

In the seven years since We Are Monster‘s release, Müller has only offered us one compilation and a handful of EPs, varying in quality from the nu-disco delight of ‘Albacares’ to the limp ‘October Nightingale’. Set against this backdrop it’s hardly surprising that news of a new album on DJ Koze’s fledgling Pampa records has been received with a mixture of rapturous anticipation and apprehension by fans.

With such a weighty legacy preceding it, there’s always a risk that the final product will crumble under the weight of expectation, but any fears of a rapid departure from the Isolee sound are soon dispelled. Opener ‘Paloma Triste’ acts as confident statement of intent, a chamber of gently reverberating synths that’s gatecrashed by bursts of willfully out-of-tune funk bass. It’s this element of the unexpected that makes Well Spent Youth so intriguing, and there’s no shortage of ideas on display here. Each track begins with a set of ingredients and then gently stirs them into new and unpredictable shapes, evoking the sense of an audio stream of consciousness. The results range across tempos, from the twisted sawtooth waves and analogue bleeps of ‘Going Nowhere’ to the reassuringly populist ‘Thirteen Times An Hour’ and ‘Journey’s End’, which revert to more familiar territory with their solid deep house grooves. Echoes of Isolee’s previous work can be clearly heard at times, most noticeably on ‘Trop Pres De Toi (’97 interlude)’, which recalls We Are Monster’s ‘Jelly Baby’ with its vocal sample looped into meaninglessness, but the album is never simply a lesson in retrospection.

Despite the producer’s insistence to the contrary, Well Spent Youth seems more geared to the solitary appreciation of the headphones than the communal experience of the dancefloor, and the best tracks on offer create a space between your ears where Müller is free to experiment with conventions and our expectations. The jarring Kraftwek pastiche of ‘Transmission’ aside, each tune more than lives up to Isolee’s reputation for constructing genuinely inspiring electronic music, and the album has a sonic depth that the listener is able to immerse themselves in. If there’s one criticism, it’s that there is none of the instant gratification of – or indeed, nothing quite as memorable as – ‘Beau Mot Plage’ or We Are Monster‘s addictive ‘Schrapnell’. Once the album is off it’s soon out of mind, but with an LP that so clearly merits repeat listens, that hardly seems to be a problem.

JJ 'Kills'

A review I wrote for FACT magazine. View the original here.

Anyone with a keen ear for Balearic pop will have received an extra present this Christmas, as December 24 saw the free digital release of a mixtape by jj. Titled jj kills, it consists of the duo’s trademark glacial vocals layered over instrumentals ripped wholesale from the heart of commercial hip-hop. Whilst this might have been considered a bizarre conceit for an album only a few years ago, we’re now living in a world where, between Kanye, Drake, Wayne and Rihanna, bearing your soul seems more hip-hop than ever. Jj take advantage of this, wielding raw emotion onto heavyweight beats to create something special, and a logical extension of the group’s history of covering rap songs (see their versions of Lil Wayne’s ‘Lollipop’ and ‘My Life’ on past albums).

There’s an interesting juxtaposition between the depth of emotion implicit in jj’s vocals and original tracks that were often brazen about their superficiality. This is most noticeable on opener ‘Still’ which finds the instrumental from ‘Still D.R.E.’ imbued with a tenderness totally absent from the original, while M.I.A’s ‘Paper Planes’ and Jay-Z’s ‘Empire State of Mind’ are twisted into languorous hymns to fractured relationships and childhood reminiscences. As Elin Kastlander’s sultry voice drags itself across Notorious B.I.G’s ‘Angels’, there’s a childish joy in re-discovering such familiar and instantly recognisable samples, echoing the theme of nostalgia that binds all of jj’s releases. That’s not to say that jj kills is overly sentimental. ‘Kill Them’ finds Elin retorting to ‘haters’ one minute before intimately addressing her lover the next, while ‘Pressure Is A Privilege’ features a passable impression of an r’n'b diva proper, her chorus sandwiched between verses by Dre and Jay Z. However it’s telling that the latter is the most conventional, as well as the least interesting, song on display here.

As the mixtape closes on a heavily auto-tuned medley of covers from Kanye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, it’s left unanswered whether this signposts a new direction for the group. What’s more likely is that this is a heartfelt and enjoyable diversion by two hip-hop lovers having a little fun between albums.

Toro Y Moi: 'Still Sound'

A review I wrote for FACT magazine, read the original here


Chaz Bundick has come a long way in a short space of time. His debut album as Toro y Moi, Causers of This comprised of off-kilter drum loops, distorted synths and snatches of melody and was at turns charming and baffling, but always enjoyable. ‘Still Sound’ has been lifted from forthcoming LP Underneath The Pine, and – like his recent London live show – indicates a move away from sample-heavy bedroom production and towards live instrumentation.

Taking a step back in time from the ’80s to the ’70s, Bundick eschews Prince-era indulgence for the accessible grooves of space disco and boogie. No longer stifled by layers of filtering, the funk hinted at in tracks like ‘Imprint After’ is finally allowed to come to the foreground, heralded by the introduction of a bassline that could have been lifted straight from the Studio 54 vaults and paired with an electric organ that summons up the spirit of The Headhunters.

Bundick’s voice also has a new-found confidence, as he cries out for the company of another human being. While the soulful moans on the breakdown echo his past forays into electronic dream-pop, they benefit from being slotted in between that infectious bassline, which winds through the song like a snake. If half the tracks on Underneath The Pine turn out to be this good then it’s already set to be one of 2011′s standout albums.