‘Who can tell how Joe Goddard’s gonna feel about this one, though it seems strangely apt that as Italo-London songstress Valentina finally comes into her own and approaches the so-called big time, she should unveil her very own, and relatively speaking very minimal take on that divine slive of pop effervescence that first awakened the world to her husky tones. Below sleeps Gabriel in all his seraphic glory, Goddard’s pulverising drops, well, dropped in favour of shushed electronic susurrations and swelling harmonies. It makes for a discombobulating first few listens without the clumpy background undulations we’ve by now become accustomed to, though with time its subtlety really begins to work commensurately sublime wonders as a groovy orchestral climax wanders about the frontal lobes for a while. Yet another side to that same, already scintillating coin…’
Valentina plays The Lexington May 2nd.
Posts tagged Hot Chip.
‘You may well, and rather conceivably play on through this one multiple times before twigging what track it actually is that Alexis Taylor and his About Group gaggle go ad libbing this time around, for this extempore take on Dionne Warwick’s Walk On By eschews the Bacharachian minor key melancholy in favour of a wilfully erratic improvisation. I never quite got why About Group were never afforded a greater cultural prominence than that which they were afforded a couple years ago around the release of their decidedly good Start And Complete LP, not least as their line up – about the only element of the band to have remained in any way rigid since – comprises members of Spiritualized and This Heat, along with longstanding Derek Bailey collaborator Pat Thomas. The band’s overtly expressive rhythmist Charles Hayward is to love and leave the troupe following on from the release of forthcoming third Between The Walls, though for now all’s as was and indeed Walk On By – which is lifted from said record – serves as a lucid continuation of all to have come before it. It’s a testament not only to the band’s musical dexterity, but so too to their fierce understanding of one another that the blustery redux below in fact sounds tighter, and indeed stricter than the majority of musical stuffs scrupulously honed over months by most currently active bands, madcap Zappa volleys clattering against warbling Hammond organs and experimental jazz à la that esteemed of the Sun Ra Arkestra. Jazz is the genre which of course entwines the somewhat disparate styles of the piece, its latter minutes redolent as much of Dave Brubeck as they are of Elton-esque honky-tonk with volatile arpeggios meandering punch-drunk into an already intoxicating fray. Beguiling all over again, it’s about time Taylor’s purportedly subsidiary group sauntered unassumingly to the fore…’
Between The Walls is anticipated July 1st.
‘It’s hard to even so much as envisage an artist ever scaling greater heights than those charted on a consummate pop song entitled Gabriel, but that’s precisely what Greco-Roman signee Valentina’s been diligently up to of late. First came the vintage, ebullient balladry of Wolves from a forthcoming EP of that same name, and below we’ve a more silky, widescreen recording still in Ladders. She may sing of hit and runs, her soaring vocal again articulating lyrics innately associated with the supernal and the dearly departed, but this one’s a distinctly earthly treasure: her momentarily earthy and otherwise skyscraping warble; that grubby bass line; and last but by no means least the supremely dexterous production which comes courtesy of resurgent pop whiz, Ben Esser. Sure, the melodramatic synth lines the track comes densely swathed in may witness Valentina once more likened to a certain Natasha Khan, though with each piece of the puzzle she bestows upon us from her lofty perch above she sets herself ever further apart.’
Wolves is released April 29th, while Valentina hosts a launch at The Lexington May 2nd.
‘While never quite my favourite from Dirty Projectors’ Swing Lo Magellan – which conversely just so happened to feature right up there among our favourite LPs of 2012 – The Socialites proved an intriguing hypothesis on reticence from David Longstreth et al., not least as they at least superficially seem a rather asocial ensemble themselves. Here, Hot Chip kingpin Joe Goddard gives it a reinvigorating spin, and perhaps inevitably readies it for those more explicitly sociable sorts of scenario – grubby dance floors, grimy house parties and the like. Though as Amber Coffman’s pirouetting coo flitters about warm house undulations and sprightly Balearic influence, the rework waltzes its way right into your affections as did Valentina’s Gabriel all those waxed moons ago. “They don’t know where I’m going”? Quite the antithesis – it’s headed for your heart posthaste.’
Goddard’s redux features alongside fellow versions from AlunaGeorge and FaltyDL, and is out May 13th on Domino.
