Album opener ‘The One Hundred Hills’ is an overture which sets up The Welcome Kinetic as something of a nu-jazz album. While a few of the tracks could be categorised as jazz, what follows is enough oddness and, well, noise, to lift it into the realms of something far more interesting. Case in point is the second track, ‘Sugar Waltz’, which starts with a grainy, comatose rhythm loops playing backwards and a whoosy organ sample before dual bass riffs, their tone squarely in 60s pop mode, drive the quiet boy-girl vocals forward. Bells and brass fade in, building the whole thing to a fairly exhilarating climax.
Morning Recordings is Milwaukee’s Pramod Tummala directing a changing roster of musicians. This is his second album and sees his palette widen to incorporate various live brass, strings and percussion instruments to his programmed samples. There’s an excellent blend of well recorded instruments and super lo-fi loops, where the sounds are slowed down and tape hiss and distortion make up as much of the timbre as the actual instruments. The mood is laid-back pop throughout but is never in danger of turning into wallpaper. There is a strong sense of psychedelia – overtly in the inverted reverb on the vocals of ‘In Twilight’ or the backwards percussion of ‘This Is Motion’ and subtlely in the organ drone of ‘Songs From A Hotel Bar’ or ‘Join The Curtains’ tremolo guitar. Vocals are used as extra textures in a variety of male and female combinations. It’s lyrically light but melodically captivating.
The Welcome Kinetic is an album which is at turns quietly charming and at others disorientingly imaginative. On the surface there is a direct simplicity but this opens up into the continually surprising sonic explorations which lie at its heart.
Adrian Elmer
*
