077
07 08 MEEK MILL Dream Chasers Dream Chasers/MMG/Atlantic
MICA LEVI + OLIVER COATES Remain Calm Slip It’s rare that an artist stirs excitement like Mica Levi. Her idiosyncratic, left-field approach to pop-punk as Micachu, and recently her award-winning score for Jonathan Glazer’s dystopian thriller Under the Skin, presented her as an unparalleled musical oddball. A serendipitous union at NTS led her to collaborate avant-cellist Oliver Coates, the man who Thom Yorke credited for cementing the sound of Radiohead’s remarkable A Moon Shaped Pool. Cut from the same cloth, both Coates and Levi hold prestigious educations in classical music, but their affinities with electronic music sees them rebel against any conservative restrictions within their compositions. On the structureless and spontaneous Remain Calm, they merge fragments of contemporary, classical, grime and techno. The abrupt and constant shift in style and form exhibits the pair’s exquisite chemistry, with Coates' cello acting like the backbone, anchoring Levi’s woozy and spectral electronics. Each piece pulls you inside a nebulous and curious alien realm before throwing you out and into another. Pre-Barok’s aching cello strings stretch and curl like a lengthy yawn on a misty spring morning; swirling synths and delicate moments of otherworldly bliss are interrupted with the menacing pull of Dragons In The Mist and contorted struggle of Fight In The Mens Toilet. The briefness of each track may frustrate the listener as a sense of longing to continue falls off each end. The evocative Barok Main weeps with a beautiful decay as Coates pours yearning strings over cascading, iridescent synths. Mob of Waters carries a familiar vocal, a gorgeously hopeful rise from the depths of the arctic sea to the sunlight gleaming through its icy sheets. This record, both stark and ineffable in its beauty, is the perfect score for melancholic, in-between days. A cherished addition to both artist’s catalogues. ! Aine Devaney
GAIKA Tavares’ 2015 Machine mixtape tackled themes of British colonialism and the socially constructed concept of hyper-masculinity. It was angry, but inwardly so, with the Brixton artist embracing the feeling of pain and hate alongside love and personal acceptance. Similarly, with the Mixpakendorsed Security mixtape, we were led down the lightless backroads where "ballers and shooters and goons dance in the same rooms". Tavares’ anthropological retelling of local dread, when delivered with playful patois and dancehallindebted sounds, delivers such confrontational lyrical content in club-ready form. With the Spaghetto EP, his first release for Warp, Tavares syrups his dystopian vision. There's a gospel bloodline pulsing through tracks such as Neophyte and The Deal, bolstered by the vocal aid of Leila Adu and Alyusha. There's also a woozy RnB softness, and Glad We Found It and VSOP warble along like Trickyassisted Clams Casino tracks. For the most part, GAIKA’s vocal quavers over reverberated piano and dribbly bass, with less growling dread and more of an emphasis on off-kilter storytelling. With Spaghetto, Tavares remains a subversive figure with a poetical vernacular that continues to shock and excite. This EP may not be his defining battle cry, but it sporadically weeps with drama and tragedy.
Even if you don’t recognise the name, you’ll almost certainly have heard Jean-Michel Jarre’s music. 1976’s Oxygene was a very popular record, and the track Oxygene Pt. IV from it still regularly played. Synthesisers weren’t new by then, but nothing else like it had sold millions of copies in multiple countries. In Jarre’s minimalist, cosmic synths and stripped-back percussion, audiences perceived The Future – a phenomenon that engendered both fear and hope. Perhaps reflecting this, the film industry began releasing sci-fi blockbusters around the same time – Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman. Western culture was, arguably, having another one of its futuristic turns. Jarre has had a successful career with classical-leaning electronic music, garnering fame for huge outdoor shows. He returned to the Oxygene theme in 1997 with Oxygene 2, and is now back to complete the trilogy. The format is mostly the same, even down to sequencing – the fourth track is the lead track again here. Oxygene Pt. XVII is the cute, hyperactive descendant of Pt. IV, unironically drawing on trance-y tropes that veer close to Europop. There’s also the Phantom of the Opera pomp of Pt. XX, a schlocky and over-egged theme to twizzle your moustache to as it dissolves into soothingly predictable ambient. Aside from these two tracks, however, much of the rest is tedious and un-engaging. The melodies and sounds that were once ground-breaking are now a bit cheesy and tired. And given how bleak it’s looking, I’m not sure Western culture is ready to get excited about The Future again any time soon.
When you make your first public outing on Theo Parrish’s Sound Signature label, there’s little chance of growing up as an artist quietly. Since that bold beginning three years ago, Jay Daniel has proven to be as vital an exponent of Detroit house as any of the grandmasters. There are many aspects that make Broken Knowz a startlingly mature debut album, but first and foremost is the percussion. On Paradise Valley the drums shuffle and shimmy in a wonderfully loose fit, funky fashion, but by third track Niiko dense and intricate polyrhythmic patterns have come into play. Amongst these angular trysts the samples, chord licks and atmospherics are delivered with poise. At times the mood can be joyous, as on Squeaky Maya, and elsewhere it’s claustrophobic. 1001 Nights feels like a late night beat session in a broom cupboard, until the synths edge some air into the humid space. For the most part though Broken Knowz is an upbeat, wildly shaped affair. The feelgood boogie of Knowledge Of Selfie is the quintessential offkilter party starter that comes on like classic West London broken beat. It’s a natural highpoint on a totally assured debut album from this prodigious Motor City talent.
The fourth instalment of Meek Mill’s hugely popular Dream Chasers mixtape series sees the Philadelphia rapper trying to revive his career following his recent feud with Drake. The beef kicked off when Meek revealed that Drake uses ghostwriters. And despite the disparity between Meek’s background and Drake’s privilege, Drake delivered a one-two punch of damaging diss tracks before flicking Meek into a bottomless pit of memes concocted by his fans and corporate sponsors. The cover of DC4 superimposes a much younger Meek, badly beaten, over a collage of the rapper’s criminal record. This is a double-edged stab at Drake, declaring both Meek’s resilience to a beating and the street credentials that are Drake’s fantasy. It is a picture worth a thousand memes, a reminder of who Meek both was and still is. Meek’s nasal yell, which strangles words at maximum volume, is what is simultaneously off-putting and thrilling about him as a rapper. He’s perhaps most exciting when rapping over the beatless loops proceeding a colossal drop; at these moments, his voice feels like a street bike revving at the starting line of a race. Though grating to some, Meek’s voice is galvanising for millions of others, particularly those in the struggle, whether that be those in the streets he speaks directly to or nerdy music writers struggling to do a chin-up. And, as he reminds us on DC4’s soulful highlight Shine, the stakes of Meek’s struggle are high enough to warrant dramatic delivery: ‘If it wasn’t for this music, I’d probably be dead/ Instead I’m on top countin’ this bread’. Meek’s material success would be immaterial – in more than one sense – without his musical success, which DC4 confidently reaffirms. This is a solid tape, with a couple of top-tier Meek tracks in Shine, Blessed and the operatically grandiose Litty (featuring Tory Lanez, another enemy of Drake’s). Its range is limited, sure, but while there are no surprises there are also no duds. While Drake smoothly switches lanes, from rap to pop to dancehall, Meek occupies only one – but it is his. Screaming away, exhaust-pipe belching fire, DC4 leaves those memes in the dust.
! Tom Watson
! Robert Bates
! Oli Warwick
! Jack Law
07 08 JE AN-MICHEL JARRE Oxygene 3 Columbia
GAIK A Spaghetto Warp
JAY DANIEL Broken Knowz Technicolour
08
VARIOUS ARTISTS Hypercolour 10 Years Hypercolour Respect where respect is due: the world isn’t exactly short of record labels that walk a line between high-end house and techno, but few are as consistently strong as Hypercolour. Over ten years, the label has carved out a niche in a somewhat saturated marketplace. As a result, both their back catalogue and the tracklisting for this anniversary compilation boast an embarrassment of riches. Over 90 minutes, Falty DL, Roman Flügel and Luke Vibert all make an appearance, but it’s the slightly lesser-known names that really shine. Early on, Steve Edwards’ DJ-Shadow-esque drum breaks and Moderatsounding vocal establishes a beautifully melancholy haze that hangs over the whole album. Gary Gritness has a go at pitched-up, jazz-leaning, sci-fi of the Maurice Fulton variety; the subtle, woozy rhythms of Matt Karmil (an underrated artist) are right at home; and there’s a simmering disco swirl jostling with a Chicago house pace and percussion on A Sagittarian’s Djax. It’s not all nicey-nicey – Analogue Cops’ playful Discoblaze is dripping with attitude, riding a bassline that demolishes several layers of rhythm, while Dense & Pika’s 2 Steps Back is resolutely menacing. But ultimately it is the softer, subtler material that wins the day: Tom Demac’s spectral, haunting Hanging Flowers of Albion is creepy in the best possible way, while Matthew Herbert’s dreamy Downgrade is gentle, electronic neo-soul of the highest calibre. An excellent selection. ! Adam Corner
REVIEWS
04