Albums of the week
Purple Legacy – A History Of Purple [World Of Wonders]
Around 2006,7 something brilliant happened in Bristol. Long one of Britain’s best cities for reggae-touched music, it took to dubstep like a fish to water. A small bunch producers, however, disregarded the greyscale elements of the scene as it then stood by injecting melody, emotion and colour, with the results given the synaesthetic title “purple” by key artist Joker, and released on Youtube and a few hyper limited 12“s. Psychedelic and full of funk, these astonishing tracks have gone on to influence the global sound of hip hop and provide a template for dubstep’s American takeover, as well as leaving behind some of the best electronic music of the last ten years.
Now, these long out-of-print records been compiled on CD by World Of Wonders. It is really quite staggering. Featuring tracks by Ginz, Rustie, L-Wiz and Baobinga & Mensah, it’s centred around the big three of Joker, Gemmy and Guido. Gemmy’s tracks look most directly to music of the hardcore continuum, with references to the rude energy of jungle and the sonic extremities of dubstep. Joker’s are often the simplest structurally, with a gift for melody bellying a serious radicalism, while Guido’s offer the most melodically and emotionally mature takes on the sound. All tracks here serve as beautiful fever dreams and awesome visions of dance’s future and past. This is an incredible record of one of the world’s most fruitful microscenes, full of some of the funkiest, most colourful music you’ll hear, and you owe it to yourself to snag a copy. [CRJ]
Echo Lake – Wild Peace [No Pain In Pop]
Echo Lake are one of the sweetest bands around London, and the shocking news that their drummer Peter Hayes passed away the week before his debut album hit the shelves colours the listen. It’s by far the best dream pop album released in an age, and has a shimmering beauty to the instrumentation, Linda Jarvis has a lovely, breathy voice and vast hidden depths lie under the simple melodies and pretty swirl. It’s a clean, simple, and somehow truthful record. It’s devastating that Pete passed away on Thursday, because he has a huge amount to be proud of. [CRJ]
Stream ‘Wild Peace’ on the Huffington Post
Darling Farah – ‘Body’ [Civil Music]
Born in techno’s birthplace Detroit before relocating to the United Arab Emirates, 20 year old Darling Farah is now living in London, where his debut album was written. ‘Body’ is masterfully toned down and sophisticated, while still retaining a certain sense of excitement and dynamism. Each track flows majestically into the next as the album travels across the techno vista, from the realms of sparsely scattered beats and ambient echoed synthesiser, to native Detroit sounds with rusty mechanical reverb. Farah creates harmonic equilibrium, evoking a kind of sensual hypnotism and simultaneously irrepressibly moving the body. Breaking away from a critical world where clubs are few and far between and playing live music is prohibited, Darling Farah’s debut blossoms promisingly but isn’t superfluous or obnoxious. His music is balanced, proportional and exquisite. [RM]
Text previously published with Dummy album premiere.
Visions Of Trees – ‘Visions Of Trees’ [Something In Construction]
Sara Atalar and Joni Juden are a pair of softly spoken musicians from London who love radical pop music and R&B. It’s worth mentioning Visions Of Trees’ adoration of pop, because this is a work of love, a sincere love letter to radical, emotional, gentle music. As such, it’s an album of moments of really quite incredible beauty, and very clever balancing of melody and harmony, but created with an almost punkly bashful element of direct and unabashed creativity. Their earlier singles were shimmering in tone and sprawling in structure, but their album is stronger, cleaner, a clearer voice, and icier in stare, though still singing softly, and we are proud to present it to you below, exclusively a week ahead of release. “Lot of our stuff is about longing to be something or somewhere else, like chilling in a forest with snakes and us wanting to project that to the audience. Yeah, not sure how long we’d last in the wilderness although I live a pretty simple life in a sense that I haven’t got a TV or like video games or anything like that,” Joni said in an interview with The Fader, and the offhand quip belies what makes Visions such a great band – this is fantasy music, made in sort of cheerful, simple isolation. Hermits dreaming of the outside world, with The-Dream open on one tab and David Attenborough in the other, with a head full of radical ideas. [CRJ]
Text previously published with Dummy album premiere.
Moritz Von Oswald Trio – ‘Fetch’ [Honest Jon’s]
After two previous studio albums and one live album through Honest Jon’s, Moritz von Oswald, Max Loderbauer and Sasu Ripatti bka The Mortic Von Oswald Trio return with ‘Fetch’, their most substantiated vessel. With nuclei of techno, dub and jazz, ‘Fetch’ progresses as these develop, breeding a hybrid of mesmerising texture and rhythm, emotion and feeling. An album that takes all forms: rigid and severe bass with mechanical synths, aqueous melodies meandering in and out of earshot, and charged, aerated drum beats and effects. An album that is innovative and vastly ambient, yet still dancefloor-conscious. [RM]
