EP Review: The Owner - NTEIBINT feat. Stella

Another slice of aural gold from Eskimo Recordings. The Owner is an easy going love song from Greek DJ and producer NTEIBINT, real name George Bakalakos. On it he whips up a steady-paced electronic track with disco flourishes with gorgeous vocals from Stella... And it is the vocal hooks and those muted guitars in the chorus that really hold this track together.

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The Owner - NTEIBINT feat. Stella

Together with an accentuated, more Balearic beatless version and and extended mix are two remixes. Justin Faust lays down a chunky elastic bassline and uses those guitars to full effect, mixing them in more liberally than on the original. It plays more with the track's layers, creating more of a sense of contrast.

Anoraak's remix is the best here - slickly layered in a effects on the central synth patterns and using a strings to create a more dramatic sense of disco that actually evokes Everything But The Girl in their Temperamental-era, and their collaboration with Deep Dish on Future Of The Future (Stay Gold) particularly. It's utterly glorious disco of the finest variety, and frankly I can't get enough of it.

The Owner is released through Eskimo Recordings on 8 June. Whilst you wait for it to come out check out an edit NTEIBINT released a while back entitled Fooling Around. His remix of Chet Faker's 1998, also below, is great too!

Stream: Love - Blooms

Love is the latest track from Hackney based R&B / electro artist Blooms, and the second to be lifted from her forthcoming second EP Still. There's a cool, laid back 80s-soaked feel to this - a little bit Blood Orange, which can only be a good thing. You've also got to love that percussion - check it out below.

Stream: Take You For Dead - Desta French

Cool R&B sounds from London-native, Columbian / Italian descendent Desta French. On Take You For Dead she combines sounds from her Latin background, 80s pop and sophisticated production to create this catchy track.

Look out for the big hooks in the chorus and the bridge - there is a real early 90s R&B sound to this - understated and excellent.

Stream: Paris - Fickle Friends

Another great track from Brighton group Fickle Friends... Paris is the second track to be taken from debut EP Velvet, out today. This is a slightly more laid back track than those we have heard from the band previously - still starry eyed but with the edge taken off. In singer Natassja Shiner's words:

“Paris is our quiet storm." explains singer Natassja Shiner, continuing "It captures the subtleties we love in Bombay Bicycle Club's instrumental layers but with our own Janet Jackson-esque spin. It's the song you hear at 3AM when things are getting hazy.

Get Velvet from iTunes or Amazon now [affiliate link].

Album Review: So Many Colours - José Padilla

I'm never quite over Balearic. No matter what happens there is always part of me digging around wondering where the next Balearic experience can come from. A poolside in a hotel, a private lawn drenched in dew and sunshine but free of connotation, the excitement of an evening in the company of people that know you for what you can be and not what you are in the drudgery of 9-5.

Once you have felt it, chances are you remember that sense of Baleria, like the one that got away. José Padilla has long experimented with this space.  Overseeing a number of Café Del Mar's compilation albums and their sunset sets in the flesh. Here on So Many Colours he expands the borders to create something a little more cinematic. 

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So Many Colours - José Padilla

So Many Colours is a druggy, slow to move and sun-caked hot-mess of a record. Padilla alternates between looting the past and frankly drowning himself inside it.

Opener Day One is a timeless shuffle, shoes squeaking on floorboards as voices shout over the hustle in order the get a drink. It's effortlessly then, now and forever... Timeless in the way it captures sun and excitement. But in comparison On The Road feels separated from the present and close to irrelevant. 

Moments like Solito are so thickly baked in the heady muddy sun that it is hard to resist getting stuck in there with them. Mojame kicks in like a crisp glass of wine, urgently suggesting we kick it back a notch, cool yet expertly insistent just as much as  track Lollipop is stark and laid back.

Album closer Remember Me is like Jean Michel Jarre after a week-long documentary concerned with mankind's brilliance: dramatic, organic, dynamic. Like much of So Many Colours it is at turns essential and frivolous. It is hard not to dream of heady days spent in Spanish sunshine when confronted with this album, yet it also over-stays its welcome... The ideas often not quite deserving all the space given over to them.

So Many Colours is out on 1 June through International Feel. Available for pre-order from iTunes and Amazon [affiliate links]. Check out a preview of album opener Day One below: