Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Uptown downtempo: Caribou, Cloud Boat

Caribou - Can't Do Without You

Dan Snaith has always circumnavigated the perimeter of warm, melodic electronics, if in a warped sense. The first track from Our Love, out October 3rd - October? We might all be dead by then! - takes dubstep and downtempo as its startoff points, looping pitch-shifted vocals and pads merely the point from which alternately glowing and glowering synth patterns eventually take off. Calvin Harris' synths pop by towards the end, only to be deliberately overheated. The overall effect is of current norms being twisted inside out and turned back on themselves like a post-EDM Mobius strip.




Cloud Boat - Hideaway

Speaking of dragging popular electronica round to someone else's singular right of way, there's a hint of James Blake's pastoralised soundscapes about this latest offering from Model Of You, out July 7th. In their case while there's a moment where the slowly building layers burst into white light it does so with shoegaze influenced surges and drones constantly pressing against the emotive vocals and clattering percussion. Producer Andy Savours has worked with My Bloody Valentine and the Horrors, which might explain part of it.

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