ALBUMSREVIEWS 8.0
Maya Jane Coles Comfort I/AM/ME/Kobalt Comfortable
It’s been just three years since diminutive artist Maya Jane Coles broke through with ‘What They Say,’ but since then, the Londoner has become a global pin-up for the new house generation. Carefully nurtured by a crack team, she’s graced more magazine covers than most electronic stars will in a whole lifetime, and as a result has fended off a wealth of major label deals for her debut album so she can self-release. So, has she resisted the urge to go all-out hit machine? Collab-heavy ‘Comfort’ certainly sounds like the Coles we know and love — poised and moody deep house with soft focus melodies and doleful vocals. But there’s also an accessible pop-friendly sheen that makes it sound quite a lot like The xx doing house. Of course that’s no bad thing, and won’t stop plenty of the airy anthems getting banged this summer, but for someone as creative as Coles, it feels a touch comfortable. Kristan J Caryl
Disclosure
Settle PMR
7.0
The future of UK pop, disclosed
YOUNG brothers Disclosure, much like any producers that can fill a club with more than 200 people, fiercely divide opinion. In less than two years the Redhill pair (Guy, 22, and Howard, 19) have gone from being underground club kids, promo pictures obscured by line drawings, to making chart music with a two-step on it. Some people hail them as the future of UK club music; others want to string them up for having a No.2 single (and probable No.1 album). Frankly, they enjoyed this sort of thing better the first time around. Disclosure’s debut album, ‘Settle’, is the tipping point between these elements, the point at which house and garage, pop and dance, and the commercial and the cutting-edge are boiled down to make a new kind of molten music. Summery singles ‘Latch’, ‘White Noise’ and ‘You & Me’ fizz alongside deep house pool party-pleasers (‘January’, ‘Defeated No More’) and sun-dappled Balearica
076
djmag.com
(‘Help Me Lose My Mind’), while the duo’s ’90s and Detroit influence dominates fist-pumpers ‘F For You’ and stand-out track, ‘Stimulation’. Even woozy, juke-y R&B makes its way in there, tied together with the same sophisticated-yet-squeaky-clean sheen. It’s a shame, however, that ‘Settle’ has fallen out of the trend tree and hit nearly every house branch on the way down. There are unexpected surprises in thwacking ballroom track ‘When A Fire Starts To Burn’ and Grab Her!’, which could be Blawan and Cajmere concocting an anthem for gypsy courting practices. But otherwise it’s all too polite, dutifully ticking off the genre boxes. The shadowy bass- tethering ‘Stimulation’ and Jessie Ware-starring ‘Confess To Me’ hint at some grit, but otherwise the album glows like a T-shirt suntan. That glow may forever change the sound of pop, but it won’t shape the future of dance music for long.Kate Hutchinson
9.0
Zomby With Love 4AD ADHD on 4AD
Whether Zomby’s refusal to finish a tune can be attributed to an acute case of ADHD or full-on bone idleness we’ll never know. However, his third LP ‘With Love’ is not short of ideas. The 8-bit dubstep of ‘As Darkness Falls’ might hark back to the early days of Croydon, but the bifta two-step of ‘Ascension’ is very much timeless, even though it clocks in at just under a minute. ‘Horrid’, however, is very much “now”, infusing footwork and trap into gothic dubstep. Elsewhere, ‘It’s Time’ is slow ruffneck jungle with heavy breaks and ‘Overdose’ is rinse-out d&b borrowing a leaf from the Metalheadz manual. With a second part (‘Volume 2’) heavy on the trap, there’s no doubting where Zomby’s affections now lie, but that’s not to say he’s forgotten where he’s come from. Opaque, bleak and a little bit sadistic. Adam Saville
Mathew Jonson Her Blurry Pictures Crosstown Rebels Supple sophomore
It might have taken him the best part of a decade to release his debut album (2010’s ‘Agents Of Time’), but just three years later the Cobblestone Jazz member and Wagon Repair label boss is back with a follow-up. Except it’s less of a follow-up and more of a revolution — away from the introspective and dreamy soundscapes of his debut, ‘Her Blurry Pictures’ is a more dancefloor- focused album of abstract melody and supple techno. Of course, though, it remains a thoroughly analogue workout. Jonson makes no bones about this being a collection of tracks, produced everywhere from a festival sound-check to studios in both Berlin and Vancouver, so don’t expect much flow to proceedings. Do expect some very pretty and unfamiliar melodic patterns, deep and meditative pieces and trippy, jazzy after-party specials, though, all of which sound supreme. Kristan J Caryl
7.0
CLOSE Getting Closer K7 Touching
As tastemaker DJ and owner of Aus and Simple Records, Will Saul certainly hasn’t been short of things to fill his time in the eight years since his last album, ‘Space Between’. But whilst his new moniker CLOSE might seem to express almost the opposite of the words ‘Space Between’, the music shares a similar sense of longing, and for all the guests here – including Appleblim and Scuba — it also sounds remarkably lonely, as if Saul has been spending more nocturnal hours pondering heartbreak in his bedroom than loved-up in clubs. Those themes are explored most explicitly in the songs with Charlene Soria, Fink and Joe Dukie, but even the instrumental tech house tracks feel melancholic, and ‘Future Love’ walks the same tear-stained streets as Burial. But whilst ‘Getting Closer’ seems — in some senses — to be an exploration of loss, one thing it’s definitely not missing is soul. Paul Clarke
9.0
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94