‘The Light’ by Red Bull Academy alumni Andreya Triana (collaborator with Flying Lotus and Theo Parrish), Richard Eignor (Ritornell) and former Sydney resident Some Freak initally seems like standard innocuous lounge wallpaper, until its subtle charms reveal themselves. The ingredients are all textbook – floating flutes, husky female vocal, congas – but each is sufficiently skewed as to make the whole interesting. The nagging piano provides the greatest kink, more Reichian phase pattern than preset loop, vamping away like Heroin Lee Lewis. The remixes come from high places, but each is too sympathetic to add anything. Dorian Concept stretch the vocals into thin fibrous threads, draped around Moloko-esque trip-hop, Patrick Pulsinger contributes the obligatory house mix, taking in both Italo and acid but remaining resolutely muzak, while Orakel’s ‘Free the Horse Dub’ drowns the original in shuffling, overbearing jazz drums. Dixon and the Innervisions mob could have worked wonders here, but I’m sure they’re already playing the original.
Joshua Meggitt
*
