Friday, December 09, 2011

STN Albums Of The Year no.23: Fair Ohs - Everything Is Dancing

Everyone does tropical guitar pop based on hi-life chords so there's no way such indie kid cultural tourism could convince any more, right? Well, Eddy Frankel runs the African redistribution label Dream Beach Records and used to be frontman in chaotic electro-grindcore outfit Cutting Pink With Knives, and Fair Ohs started out as the sort of underground London band whose songs rarely last more than a minute. These songs are much longer, clearly, but bring a whole new slant to Afro-post-punk's westernisation. The production is simultaneously minimal in its repetition of killer intricate riffs and small gobbets of phrasing while the rhythm section lock into effortlessly funky shapes and the guitar reverberates and slides up and down the trebly, punchy spectrum so the playing seems both complex and intuitive. It's music precision targeted for unthinking movement and summer joy.

[iTunes]
[Amazon]
[Spotify]

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