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.
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: