Juno Recommends Balearic / Downtempo: October 2022

Review: The second part of the Dancefloor Records reissue series on Emotional Rescue comes in the form a true house classic - Chicago legend Andrew Komis' 'It's You' is an original deep house bomb. It's essentially a cover/updated version of ESP's track of the same name, but this 1989 version is tougher, heavier and deeper with a variety of mixes - the New York-London, acid-infused Free House and drum heavy NU Style Mix - all designed to rock big sound systems.

Review: Fukagawa Kiyotaka is the Japanese artist behind the Calm alias. He is a master of instrumental downtempo funk and soul, with lashings of Mediterranean and Balearic vibes in his lush and escapist sounds. He has put out many an album over the years and now Hell Yeah, a label he has recorded new material for recently, reissue one of his greats. Before takes a horizontal approach to disco and house with beautiful sax and synths, musical grooves and plenty of starry and sunny motifs.

Review: Matthieu Beck commonly drifts around collaborative projects like Zooey, having previously cut his teeth in French indie rock bands such as Adam Kesher, but now he appears solo on Growing Bin with a rather sublime slice of island boogie in concept as well as sound. From the title Here Alone to the castaway artwork and beyond, Beck makes no attempt to obscure his inspiration making this record. In the Growing Bin tradition, this is the thoroughly relaxing kind of marooned Beck is depicting - a balmy isolation bedecked in fresh fruit and with ample espadrilles to see you through until a rescue party appears on the horizon. Why worry when you can kick back and enjoy the peace and quiet?

Review: It's nice to see 21st century Balearic maestros putting their seventh studio album out on NuNorthern Soul, a label whose impact on the "nu-Balearic" scene has been similarly sizable. Everything Moves, Nothing Rests is classic Coyote, with subtle shifts in musical emphasis - dubbed-out one minute, Latin-tinged, chugging or ultra-deep the next - cloaked by the Nottingham-based duo's distinctively warm, dreamy and tactile trademark sound. Combined with a range of booming basslines, countless echo-laden vocal snippets, tons of colourful synths sounds and multiple references to the cultural themes that have long been a feature of their work, this all adds up to one of the pair's best long-form outings to date.

Review: Under the Jaz alter-ego, John Zahl has been serving up laidback, Balaearic-minded edits of musical obscurities since the mid 2000s. Initially, that was for Claremont 56 offshoot Sixty Five, but in the last decade he's also appeared on Passport To Paradise, Rotating Souls and, most recently, Pinchy & Friends. Here he returns to the latter label with four more rubs of atmospheric cuts from the dusty corners of his record collection. He begins with the wonderfully throbbing, solo-heavy dancefloor synth-scape of 'Cloud Worship', before successfully tinkering with a tactile, semi-organic proto-house gem on 'Pick a Toy'. Over on side B, 'Puzzle' is a tidy revision of a cosmic-minded, French language Balearic synth-pop gem, while 'Friday Night' is an eccentric, off-kilter slab of new wave disco oddness.

Review: Belgrade's Tapan debut on Offen with an EP that has been a long time in the making but finally arrives in grand fashion. It is an exotic and intoxicating take on Balearic music with 'Missing' defined by snaking and hypnotic synths and tumbling drums. There is brilliantly loose drum programming and tons of echoing hits on 'Samo Prolaznost' that make it impossible not to shake your limbs to and 'Rain Dance' is a ten-minute slow-motion workout. 'Novi Svet' closes with more crashing drums and intense dance floor feels.

Review: Zapatilla, better known as Louis Hackett, is a founding member of Brownswood 's Owiny Sigoma Band and key collaborator on Eska's Mercury nominated debut album, but has a neat side hustle making house music with one foot in the gentle melodies of Balearic beat and another in the irresistible energy of Afrobeat. It's a recipe that he continues over onto this fine four tracker, which opens with the smoothly grooving but lively 'Like Dat' before 'Zimzimmer' builds up around a gently frenetic Afro guitar riff. On the flip, 'Disco Facial' is slower and more retro, with a synth line that could be from a lost John Carpenter soundtrack. 'Self Isolated' completes the package in its most esoteric fashion, another synth work rooted in the past, this time perhaps echoing the approachable experimentalism of Jean Jacques Perry.

Review: Four new amorphous cuts from Bitchin Bajas, a Chicagoan trio active since 2010, and operating in the circle of freeform, longform, largely formless improv electronica. A staple of the North American music circuit, their live show is a mammoth operation involving tapes and guitars, and their music sounds something akin to what would happen if Terry Riley's Buddha on the front cover of 'Shri Camel' were given an extra bionic limb. 'Amorpha', 'Geomancy', 'World B. Free' and 'Quakenbruck' are rhythmic, humble forways through 'waves', 'phases', 'stratospheric arcs' and whatnot, leading to a fantastical musical enlightenment.

Review: Sexo y Fantasia is a coming together of two artists in 1988. One was from Italy, one Belgium, and they did so in the infamous X-rated film Rocket 23 Studios Molenbeek and crafted a brilliantly seductive soundtrack for Sexo y Fantasia, which went on to become a cult movie of the late '80s erotique era. New beat, proto house and Italo sounds all feature with distorted vocals from the X-rated movies. They are powerful atmospheric tracks rooted in Balearic magic that still sound super good to this day.

Review: There's always been something cinematic - or at least suitably epic - about Alex Schauffler's Superpitcher productions, and in recent years they've got progressively more widescreen. With Hollywood, the Paris-based German's first Mule Musiq outing for three years, he's gone the whole hog and delivered something akin to a soundtrack to a 40-minute movie that exists only in his imagination. Split into two "chapters" of 20-minutes each, it's a gloriously warming, sun-soaked affair that slowly builds via waves of melody, effortlessly gorgeous chords and thematic hooks before the introduction of a hypnotic, subtly evolving deep house groove. As chapter two progresses, it does something similar but in reverse, becoming ever more blissful until it reaches a sublime ambient conclusion. It's a genuinely stunning piece of music all told.

Review: Fresh from showcasing some of the buried treasure within Vasilu Stepanov and Vlad Dobrovolski's work as SAD, Glasgow 12th Isle crew has decided to deliver something undeniably fresh: a debut EP from Toronto scene stalwarts Cosmic JD and Jersua Leao as Bruxula. The EP is pitched as being sited 'somewhere between the dancefloor and the living room', showcasing an attractive fusion of electronic and acoustic instrumentation as well as Leao's Brazilian vocals. On side A the pair smother a warming, laidback mid-tempo groove with echoing jazz guitar and evocative vocals ('Pala Mo'), before delivering some woozy ambient stargazing in the form of the inspired 'A X'. Over on the flip, they bounce between Dubtribe-goes-ambient techno, slow-motion deepness ('The Bird on the Hell'), spacey ambient jazz ('Dark Farfisa') and meandering, melancholic ambient ('JD's Outerlude').

Review: Acclaimed German duo Boozoo Bajou get their 2005 curiosity 'Dust My Broom' reissued. The trip-hop album featured the intriguing fusion of Cajun and Caribbean rhythms, courtesy of core contributing percussionists Florian Seyberth and Peter Heider. It's a smokey, dubbed-out dust-trailer, featuring contributions from members of Fat Freddy's Drop and Top Cat. "Let me take you to the swamp" it urges, as a strange backstreet of delay and drums unfolds

Review: Last year, David Lovato's first outing as LOVA was one of the NuNorthern Soul label's most cherished releases. Now it gets some superb remixes offered up next to three of the originals. The first is the gentle Mediterranean sway of 'Cecilia' which carries on through 'Echoes Of Memories' with its heady and heavenly pads and gentle tumble of toms. 'Esperanza' is another horizontal bit of Balearic bliss which Danilo Braca flips into something more late-night and cosmic. Hear & Now's remix is a long legged and superb slow and serene and Leo Mas & Fabrice remix 'Cecilia' into a tambourine laced deep disco dreamscape.

Review: German-Brazilian artist Gloria de Olivera and David Lynch associate Dean Hugely come together for an album that cerebrates the joy and escapism of dream pop. It is an album on Sacred Bones awash with eerie synth strings that are offset by De Olivera's German vocals. Drums echo the sounds of the early Cocteau Twins and the shimmering synths take you higher. It is a low key work with plenty of lo-fi aesthetics but one that makes a grand emotional impact. 'Hanging Gardens' is a real favourite with its moody backdrop of wooly synths.

Review: Klaus Schulze's side project, Richard Wahnfried, gave rise to its third album Megatone in 1984. It finds the German synth legend work with Michael Garvens, Axel-Glenn Muller, Ulli Schober, Michael Shrieve and Harald Katzsch across a suite of expressive and retro-future kraut rock epics. His kosmische musik sounds are embellished with big guitars and synth strings, driving drum machine sounds and intoxicating percussive that makes it a powerfully propulsive record with a richly evocative sound. The texture, arrangement and synthetics quality of it all make it a stone-cold 80s classic that is well worth revisiting whether you're new to the artist or a die-hard fan.

Review: A Mountain of One pair off in a versus battle with dub maestro and longtime studio wizard Dennis Bovell for new dub versions of 'Custard's Last Stand.' This is the first new music from A Mountain of One in a decade and it marks the inaugural release on their new AMORE label. This tune was recorded over Skype during the pandemic and shows that the pairing of Mo Morris and Zeben Jameson and have lost nothing since we last heard from them - it is snaking atmospheric, deep dub with plenty of heady pads and cinematic designs. Welcome back!

Review: Oddball Fantasies is more than pleased to welcome Cheb Runner for its second release. His Moroccan roots remain omnipresent in this perfectly balanced blend between traditional Rai elements and the irresistible sound of the 80s underground. When old meets new, those who resist to dance, shall be few!