I’m gonna cut and call it from the start: I think this is one of the best new releases I’ve heard all year, easily. A quiet wow. Not just a new soundmap, but maybe even a different kinda compass. It might be dubbed psychedelic disco universal boogie, for easy reference, but handle with care - there’s a more beautifully bastard groove at work on your headspace than an off-the-rack label will lead you to – this duo have swallowed their influences whole and assimilated them, subliminated them and re-constituted them into something intensely reminiscent, yet entirely of and on its own.
It’s a musical map that overtly references kraut rock, italo/disco and postpunk, but also sheds an innate affinity with incidental musak, TV theme choons of olde and even chill comp. filler. Throughout, there’s an exceptional understanding of melodic narratives & groove building. It’s another episode of songcraft’s revenge, sublimely composed in all senses of the phrase, and made into something as agreeable as it is satisfying.
The tracks will sit weightlessly on the edge of audibility, but it’s not wallpaper – despite the lack of apparent gravity there’s a definite propulsiveness, an urge at work that bends you and time and tunes forward, onward.
Perfect driving music, and I’m reminded of other wonderful freeway albums; Can’s Future Days, Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express and even Dark Side (or perhaps better and more apt, Dub Side) of the Moon. Turn it up and it turns you on, keep it playing and it’ll keep you fed or (let’s mix a metaphor) lit-up and warm like a well-built campfire. There is a similarity there with a nice fire, that sense steady combustion – its actual warmth and then the intangible resonance, the thing that draws you to it.
I have as little doubt as my scepticism will allow that this album will become a classic – but wither the future, for at least the time being, this is the best thing I can put my ears close to.
Lovely.