Tuesday 26 July 2011

Washed Out: 'Within And Without'

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



In our culture of ever-shortening cycles of fashion, it already seems an age since journalists and bloggers were falling over each other to find a suitable moniker for the movement of bedroom-produced, lo-fi electronica seeping out of underground America. While the resultant “chillwave” was never more than an artificial construct, one man who’s indelibly linked with it is Earnest Weatherly Greene, a.k.a. Washed Out. Releasing the acclaimed Life of Leisure EP in 2009, he’s waited until now to gift us with a full length album. But as the tide of hype begins to recede, the question remains whether there’s still a need for yet another lesson in hazy synths and sampled tape hiss.

From the opening chords of Within And Without however, it’s clear Greene doesn’t have time for such debates. Evoking Animal Collective at their most accessible, the soaring vocals and reverb-laden harmonies expose the presence of producer Ben Allen, the man behind the mixing desk on Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. Expanding Washed Out’s sonic spectrum beyond the high end frequencies has imbued his sound with a necessary weight, encouraging Greene to unleash his pop sensibilities and transforming ‘Eyes Be Closed’ and ‘Amor Fati’ into understated anthems that would tempt you to sing along if only you could decipher the words.

Following in the footsteps of Toro Y Moi’s Underneath The Pine, Greene has shuffled out of his bedroom and down to the studio, taking with him a selection of live instrumentation and a more confident vocal approach, the accumulated experience of two years playing his music in a live context. Freed from a reliance on samples, Greene’s personality shines through on tracks like ‘A Dedication’, which veers surprisingly close to traditional song writing territory as he sings tenderly over a bittersweet piano melody and muted horns. On ‘You and I’ he’s joined by Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek, whose ethereal moans and intimate whispers diffuse seamlessly between the plodding bassline and fractal synths.

This subtle but significant change to Washed Out’s approach is most clearly felt through the role of drums on the album. Gone are the muffled compressed beats of Life Of Leisure, replaced by the clean and confident clatter of kicks and snares that ground the synth washes of ‘Before’, or the tribal percussive fills that raise the heart rate during ‘Eyes Be Closed’. Even the subdued ‘Echoes’ has an electro-disco rhythm that makes eyes at the dancefloor without quite having the courage to step onto it.

Some of the tracks still struggle to shrug off an aura of stoned apathy, and despite his strained play on Washed Out’s name there is a ring of truth to Diplo’s evaluation when applied to songs like ‘Soft’ or ‘Within And Without’. Ultimately though, this is a self-assured debut album from a musician with an increasing confidence in his own abilities. A logical progression from his previous singles, this is Greene continuing to explore a sound that he helped create, and showing there’s still some mileage left in it.

Sunday 17 July 2011

Cornelia: 'Aquarius Dreams'

Cornelia's new EP is one of my favourite releases of the year so far. Here's my review for FACT magazine.

With the release of her By ‘The Fire’ / ‘Now And Hereafter’ single in February, Cornelia Dahlgren earned a position as one to watch in 2011. Two spellbinding lessons in electronic pop, they benefited in no small part from having standout remixes courtesy of TOKiMONSTA and Daisuke Tanabe. Having spent part of the year soaking up the LA sunshine with the Brainfeeder clan, she’s now back with a new release, the first on her own label Camp Mozart.

‘Aquarius Dreams’ finds the Swedish singer evoking the innocence of childhood, extending us an intimate invitation into her own imaginary world over a see-sawing riff played on a nursery keyboard. She’s accompanied by militaristic drums and soaring synth horns that build to a crescendo before dissolving in awe at the beauty of the vocal hook.

Cornelia hasn’t lost her knack for picking good remixers either, and ‘Aquarius Dreams’ is supported by three varied but equally rewarding takes on the title track. Kid Specific doesn’t hide his dancefloor aspirations, with brittle snares snapping over a bassline that curls and stretches like a cobra, while Circle Traps’ Will Ward takes the opposite approach, couching the production in a lo-fi haze that creates a sense of physical space between the music and the listener, as if the record is being spun on an ancient gramophone in the next room.

However it’s DVA’s remix that’s been getting the most attention, and it’s not hard to see why. His most ambitious and abstract work to date, each element has been surgically removed, warped and stretched beyond all recognition, leaving the track to lurch forward in a drunken dance – unique and unsettling in equal measure.

Wednesday 13 July 2011

YACHT: 'Shangri-La'

YACHT have a new album out on DFA this month. Here's my review for FACT magazine.

It was only weeks ago that professional doomsday prophet Harold Camping got a bunch of fundamentalist Christians worked up by his declarations that the rapture would commence on 21 May 2011. While his prediction proved sadly unfounded, it hasn’t stopped Claire L. Evans and Jona Bechtolt from constructing their new album around this very human obsession with attaining paradise.

Although not the most obvious concept for your average DFA electro-disco fodder, there’s certainly mileage in exploring the idea of why mankind feels the need to dream up utopian visions of the future. However YACHT have made an LP that doesn’t try to transcend the earthly but instead keeps its feet firmly on the ground, or at least the dancefloor: the sprightly plucked guitar of opening track ‘Utopia’ paving the way for some trademark LCD cowbells and frenziedly strummed bass. ‘Dystopia (The Earth Is On Fire)’ is an inversion on the same theme, dominated by a weighty synth line and ominous Ballard-esque lyrics that describe the collapse of the eco-sphere, re-cycling the chorus of Rock Master Scott’s ‘The Roof Is On Fire’ while altering the cadence just enough for it to be forgivable.

From this starting point the duo go on to tackle such heavyweight philosophical notions as the nature of God and the end of the world, while retaining a softness of touch and a sense of fun that’s impossible to dislike: a bubble-gum pink prism through which Armageddon becomes the ultimate excuse for a party. In between all the posturing they even find time for some misguided romanticism in ‘Love In The Dark’, its plodding Human League style synths accompanying dubious lyrics like “I love you like a small-town cop / Yeah I want to smash your face in with a rock”, made all the more sinister for being intoned in Claire Evans’ sultry voice.

Like the LP’s cover, the result is a bizarre mish-mash of ideas that fails as often as it succeeds, most notably in the bewildering appearance of squelchy frat-step basslines, bhangra drums and auto-tuned vocals during low-point ‘High Roller’. There’s also a nagging sense that the ubiquitous cow bells and fidgety bass that sounded so fresh when peddled by James Murphy & co back in 2005, and here form the backbone of tracks like ‘Paradise Engineering’ and ‘Tripped And Fell In Love’, have started to get a little stale. Yet while Shangri-La occasionally sags under the weight of its own convictions, you have to give Bechtolt and Evans credit for the scope of ambition employed here, attempting to create a concept album of dancefloor pop that has a valid message to convey.


Thursday 7 July 2011

Pursuit Grooves: 'Frantically Hopeful'

Here's my review of Pursuit Grooves' new album for FACT mag. View the original here.


Rapper, singer, producer: Vanese Smith is that rare thing in modern music, a jack and master of all trades. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if she penned rhymes in one hand while feeding beats into her SP505 with the other. On Fox Trot Mannerisms, her last release for Pinch’s Tectonic label, she applied the same versatility to both genre and tempo, providing her own unique interpretations of hip hop, broken beat and house.

Frantically Hopeful picks up where Fox Trot left off. Opener ‘Revolutionaries’ packs quite a punch, a deceptive false start leaving us in no doubt that we’re playing by Smith’s rules. A defiantly discordant rhythm arrives, chafing against Smith’s soulful vocals; a juxtaposition between rough and smooth that is a recurrent theme of her music. ‘Type Send Universe’ is like a real-time exploration of how far she can take her cut ‘n’ paste mentality to beats, centred around a loop that sounds like a needle skipping in the groove of a forgotten funk 7″.

Later on the album swings fluidly between the earnest rap of ‘I Sink’ and ‘Clueless’, tracks which cement Smith’s reputation as an intelligent and socially conscious MC in the mould of Yarah Bravo, and more subdued numbers like ‘Peace Talks’, a slice of nu-soul which tips a nod to the experimental beat collages of the Brainfeeder circle. As a musician based in New York, Smith’s music evokes the melting pot of cultural identities that define the city while sparing time to glance over the Atlantic for inspiration. ‘Clueless’ picks up the baton from Bugz In The Attic’s ‘Knocks Me Off My Feet’, while the aptly named ‘Bedazzled’ is a twisted take on UK Funky, killer kick drums and razor sharp vocal samples smothered in sun-drenched chords.

Closer ‘What About’ encapsulates everything that’s great about Smith’s winning formula while also managing to be the best track on the album. The classic break from Bobby Byrd’s ‘Hot Pants’ is chopped up, slowed down to a crawl and spliced with French cinema samples, while Smith’s plaintive cries of “what do you want from me?” linger in the air long after the song’s over. If there’s a criticism to be made of Frantically Hopeful, it’s that some of the tracks feel quite bare: ‘Mars Rising’ in particular sounds like the skeleton of an idea that would have benefited from being fleshed out, but that’s a minor qualm in an album of such commendable originality and scope.