I'm currently dying of heat exhaustion at work in the British July weather (desk based thermometer reads: 31 degrees!) but this new EP from Parisian born producer French Kiwi Juice is definitely helping keep me going.
Time For A Change is out this week via Roche Musique. On it FKJ combines hot and sunny disco house sounds with a hip-hop edge and just a dash of soft rock... Check it out via the embeds below or you can stream it on FKJ's Soundcloud page.
Kon typifies the crate digger, that form of man that spends an unhealthy amount of time chasing down circular pieces of black plastic in an attempt to unearth a hidden gem. Whilst physical music and even music ownership as a concept appear to be rapidly and irreversibly losing favour and yet the appeal of vinyl has long seemingly held steady, and Kon is a worshiper of the form.
It's logical that vinyl would appeal to Kon. His music is defined by and revolves around funk, a genre vinyl is undeniably sympathetic too. I've been listening to On My Way on MP3 (well, technically AAC) by way of a CD, but there is no doubt it would sound better through the golden and thick filter of some heavy weight vinyl.
Despite this my experience with On My Way shines. Kon creates funk tracks that have a little of the grit of early funk but deliver it with the liberal application of 80s slick soul production and a dash of 90s R&B. As an album it takes some time to get going - the dizzily spellbound interlude of 'Day Dream' that follows two full tracks feels like the first sit-up-and-take-notice moment. But that brief transient moment is immediately followed by the Georg Levin featuring 'Don't Cha Wanna', a sassy track that sways with sunny promiscuity and backs it up with an infectious chorus you won't want to stop listening to.
Kon's passion for music comes through on this album by means of the music he plays. Despite being a focused album in length and scope, it's 51-minutes in length, there is still room for moments in pure tribute, such as the electro-influenced short side-piece '808 State'. Kon's real strength though is in his assertive guest-vocal featuring funk soul songs. Ben Westbeech, whom Kon met at the Southport Weekender, provides vocals on the insistent 'You Don't Know (I've Been Looking For You)’. The disco and boogie influenced keys of collaborator Yuki Kanesaka are all over this album and lend it much of it's upbeat and house-influenced sound.
There's a lot to like in On My Way. Kon's production talent is clear in managing to create songs with clarity and polish that matches their feeling. On 'Blow Me... A Kiss' Kon manages to marry modern house music to an authentically soulful and syrupy vocal from Amy Douglas that gives the track just a bit more guts than most current dancefloor orientate music... It might not capture the zeitgeist or redefine a genre, but On My Way is an unmistakable pleasure.
On My Way is released on BBE on 22 July, available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].
The press release for Yosi Horikawa argues the devil is in the detail. It's easy to understand why. Horikawa's Vapor is a highly textual piece that creates music out of noisy layered sonics and boasts a sophisticated and ambitious sense of scale.
Vapor channels musique concrete and dubby looped samples to conjure something global in scope and seemingly heavily considered. After the opening intro, 'Bump' is a suitable indication of where Horikawa aims to take the listener. It's a tribal-influenced piece full of complex and layered sounds and, at its peak, a template for Vapor as a whole. Similarly 'Rainbow' is tropical and dizzying in ambition, a musical collage constructed of soft ambient chords and a flourish of rhythms constructed from water based samples.
Elsewhere 'Letter' is a fragile and and subtle piece that combines a broad melody with the tight detail of wound gears and spinning chains, creating a somewhat spellbinding level of melodic detail out of sounds that seemed to have been organised with impossible detail. 'Grandpa' is climatic, a moment of sun-baked tribal irrepressible celebration that starts to heave the curtain closed on a complex album.
The problem with Vapor is that it is here for too long. Yosi Horikawa constructs an album with the same earthly majesty of John Talabot's wonderful 2012 debut, but in applying it to a more freeform genre allows it to blossom. Sadly in doing so he squanders much of the magic, employing a 71-minute album structure at the expense of the listener and just about everything but length.
As the album title suggest, the music here is best consumed in a semi-transient form, at its best it is also at its most difficult to pin down. Sadly in chaining it to a long-form construct we get a album that shines in the present but fades over time. Yosi Horikawa's music might be better consumed in mini-album format. You should listen to its songs but not its whole story.
Vapor is out now on First Word Records, available on CD and MP3 from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate links]. Stream now on Spotify:
Mwahaha's debut album was released a couple of weeks ago through Plug Research Records and on it the four-piece have created a dizzy and psychedelic pop record that blends delicate vocals with assertively delivered drum beats and chaotic synth melodies.
Mwahaha has a chaotic sound but recalls The Flaming Lips as much as anything else, capturing the spirit of Wayne Coyne's band just as they descended from heavenly to deeply paranoid. So this album feels a little like At War With The Mystics, if without some of the hooks and the knowing sideways glances to pop-culture. Ross Peacock's vocals are predominantly delivered falsetto, something which manages to simultaneously emphasise the moments of candy-dreams and the descent into the album's more frictional and uncompromising moments.
The album opens with 'Swimmer', a track that seems to roll in like heavy cloud on a summer's day. It's a little out of control with chip-tune bass loops and heady drumming clatter into Peacock's vocals. 'Poinsettia' is a moodier version of the band, the vocals obfuscated beneath several layers of production and at times dropping several octaves.
In the beginning 'We Build' is youthful, reckless and feckless in comparison to Mwahaha's more conflicted moments, but it descends into one of the album's noisiest and most industrial moments - heavily processed vocals functioning as bass lines against a clattering drum beat. When at full-tilt the band channel the same kitchen-sink aesthetic used by melodic electro punk band the Mae Shi.
That latter half of 'We Build' triggers the band's most confrontational moment as the album moves towards its second half. 'Rivers And Their Teeth' is a barrage of sub-bass and found sounds that emerges as a syrupy and doped-up ballad. The album draws to a close with 11-minutes of psychedelic rock in 'Bathynomus Gigantes', a track that slowly builds like a pressure cooker and feels post-apocalyptic. It's the aural equivalent of the shoots of grass that burst through neglected asphalt and animals repurposing our living space after the end of our species. Out of the seemingly disordered sound of Mwahaha comes something new and almost beautiful: they are at their best when their focus is at its worst.
Mwahaha is out now on Plug Research Records, available to order on CD, LP and MP3 from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate links]. Stream the album on Spotify:
Lush video for 'Ride The Prejudice', taken from Phonat's recent Identity Theft EP.
Phonat is Italian producer Michele Balduzzi and this EP follows up his 2008 debut. The video itself is a surreal but spectacular shape-shifting piece of modernism that really fits with the IDM / future 2-step sound of the song.
Check it out and go to Phonat's official website for more info.