‘Another Monday and to commemorate the crushing mundanity the day embodies with a most despairing inherence, we’re back here divulging a further ten tracks from our 2012 ranking. Our previous instalment took in a Fuck Button, the irrefutably inimitable Bobby Womack, and a lo-res JPG of a cat in a box. This one, meanwhile, clicks through a smattering of woebegone London lo-fi, a couple snared from the Captured Tracks roster, the inevitable Hot Chip entry, and something ever so slightly special from Sam Willis who was once, all in all, just another brick in Walls…’
Dots & Dashes’ Tracks of 2012: #21 – #30.
‘Perhaps it’s for the positive that we weren’t quite so hasty in assessing what was, having experienced this second disc, a duly overdue début. Talabot took his time in piecing it together, just as we’ve taken our good sweet lo que sabes in coming around to review the oeuvre. Certainly witnessing the perpetually peaked hombre sweat it out on home turf proffered a better understanding of what it was that he was about and just as time may often be cited as life’s omnipotent, all-forgiving healer, it may also be its hesitant evangelist in this instance. In Depak Ine and in deeper reverence praise alike, ƒIN now appears all but immortally excellent.’
Ahead of its rerelease this week, Dots & Dashes review John Talabot’s supreme début full-length, ƒIN…
‘Stretching out for immediate hyperbole, Anna Müller could yet prove to be to Vienna what John Talabot has ceaselessly made himself out to be to Barça – the envelope-pushing experimental dance torchbearer; the city’s unsanctioned cultural ambassador. Operating under the acronymic pseudonym of HVOB (that’ll be Her Voice over Boys) alongside her suitably less vocal and thereby by default more enigmatic counterpart (or ‘colleague’ as she reticently shushes over email) Paul Wallner, the duo draw upon a rich palette of influence to innovate a gloomy picture of looming perfection. Dogs is the standout of an altogether striking début EP release: recalling those more mellifluous reflections of Trent Reznor some time around the turn of the Millennium, that’s not to say that this one sounds in any way throwback nor retrospective. The Devil and God forbid. Though neither, arguably, does The Fragile, and Dogs indeed hounds the now with insistent urgence – essential from first play. As the moniker may intimate, Müller’s candied vocals play an unmistakably focal role – the sweet stillness at the tempestuous heart of a snowy whirr of ambient house; an amalgam of Reznor’s very own How to destroy angels_ offshot, John Roberts’ seminal anti-dance effort, Glass Eights, and Andy Stott’s 2k12 breakthrough Luxury Problems. And by ‘eck is it a luxuriously spectacular recording. The softest melodiousness since Love Like a Sunset though yet more melancholic than any track yet featured in anything directed by Thomas Mars’ significant other, Sofia Coppola, it’s one to keep the hermits among us warm throughout this most bleak of midwinter hibernations.’
‘Having released one of the year’s unexpected aural treats in ƒIN, and now touting a tightly honed live show (the Cataluñan, alongside steadfast accomplice Pional, seduced a perfect Bestival sunset from an Isle of Wight horizon just last weekend) John Talabot has come on leaps and bounds in these past six months alone. Were he once Cabrera, he’s now Ibiza, and he’s throwing down aptly joyous parties all over the place, if never enough in the UK. Many of these are soon set to take place upon North American soils as Talabot heads out to coexist alongside The xx rejuvenated, and it’s on these dates where he’ll be flogging off a 7”, the grooves of which shall stream forth with unreleased material from the LP aforementioned. Mai Mes is an overwhelming surge of comparatively antiquated hip hop FX, expansive yet introverted slo-mo disco, and swirls of sonic that sound authentically heartfelt. However, it’s Tragedial that far more forcefully avenges its omission from finalised tracklisting, as its icy frialdad is as though the blood pumper to Karin Dreijer Andersson’s gelid Fever Ray work thawed out by the Med-via-Ohio heat of Teengirl Fantasy’s End. An undisputed artist of our year.’
DOWNLOAD: John Talabot, Mai Mes / John Talabot, Tragedial.
