RLASKEY: words

Aside from seeing the name and relating it to the particular species of monkey, I hadn’t given Bonobo that much thought.. until I found his recent album, Black Sands, and started to preview its tracks.

Maybe the easiest way to describe Black Sands is that it takes some of the ideas of Plaid, slows them down, heads towards an assemblage style in the vein of Four Tet, and then incorporates a variety of instruments and vocals to tug at the heart strings.  This album is lush, powerful, intriguing, and beautiful.  It’s downtempo, without a sight of aggression through any segment, and it has plenty of dub styling and analogue filters which tend towards all sorts of warm and heady feelings.

Andreya Triana is also the other name to watch on this particular release.  I haven’t heard her work before, though she appears on three of the twelve total tracks and is a joy to the ears.  I do hope their collaborations continue, as they fit together so well.

Grab Black Sands at Amazon. It’s worth the paltry fee of admission many times over.

I picked up “A Certain Distance” by Lusine on a whim; I had seen it placed in the charts at emusic, and after listening to some samples I had a feeling it was worth the download.  I was most certainly right, and I’ve had it come by my ears many times since.

“Think of It,” the fourth track on the LP, is certainly the one that hits a high, though the entire album is a pleasant saunter through some colorful blips, bloops, and blops.  The album infuses elements of Plaid with some even more blissed out, rolling scenery.  It doesn’t push, but instead pulls the listener along, making it all that more accessible.  Lusine took a lot of the elements from minimal electronic music and threw some extra spice into the mix, enough to result in a very warm experience that has had me revisit its notes again and again.

Grab it, at Amazon.

2562 and Martyn is a flat out dangerous combination, and the Yet/Kontrol single is a beauteous release.  Both tracks float along smoothly, with underlying beats that cut up and push forward with some serious weight.  Of the two, “Yet” is certainly the more aggressive of the two: and it comes out from the start with a beat that could make most men cry, bathed in a post-breakbeat crunchiness.  ”Kontrol” is more subdued, set in a dream land that doesn’t attack yet still holds a dub-infused bite.

Both 2562 and Martyn are massive players in the electronic dub / dubstep scene.  I only wish they had kept on composing.  There’s enough variety in style between these two tracks that I certainly can see a lot of potential for future collaboration.  I can only hope.

Grab it, via Amazon.