After first emerging back in 2000 with his debut album Entrance To Skyway, Auckland-based downbeat producer Andrew Spraggon has cultivated a healthy Australasian following for his efforts as Sola Rosa, resulting in his 2001 follow-up Solarized and its companion Haunted Outtakes set being greeted with significant critical and audience acclaim. While Spraggon’s previous outings as Sola Rosa have seen him constructing his tracks primarily around samples and loops, this third album Moves On (originally released in New Zealand in 2005 and only just receiving local Australian distribution now) represents a significant step forward in that it shows Sola Rosa morphing into more of a band incarnation built around live players. It’s also a collection that showcases Sola Rosa’s most high-profile guest collaborations yet, with Spikey Tee, Paul St. Hilaire and Deva Mahal (daughter of legendary bluesman Taj) all contributing their skills to tracks here (an international connection that’s no doubt the result of previous Sola tracks featuring on compilations such as High Fidelity Dub Sessions.
While the textural palette is undeniably lusher and more fluid than that heard on any preceding Sola Rosa longplayer, even an initial listen clearly illustrates that while Spraggon’s re-geared his activities, he hasn’t exactly thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Opening instrumental segue “The C’Mon’ shows all of Sola’s trademark lush downbeat hip-hop leaning firmly in evidence whilst also illustrating this newfound “bigger’ sound, as majestic jazz horn samples get scratched back and forth amidst swirling vinyl-plundered orchestration atop a smooth backing of live hip-hop rhythms that calls to mind The Herbaliser or perhaps one of Boca 45’s less bigbeat-centric moments. “What If?’ takes things out towards instrumental jazz-funk hip-hop grooves in the vein of Rephrase, with looped samples of an Ella Fitzgerald-style soul vocalist sliding back and forth against Nathan Haines’ fluid saxophone runs and burbling synth-bass in a laidback offering that bar the horns, wouldn’t be out of place on an RJD2 record, before “Redeemer’ ushers in smooth, vaguely reggae-tinged rnb grooves, while Deva Mahal contributes a typically sultry soul performance that’s sure to be familiar to anyone who caught her highlight appearances on fellow Kiwis Fat Freddy’s Drop’s recent album.
By contrast, “Badman’ throws the dub-ragga influences straight to the forward, with Spikey Tee laying down some curiously skat-tinged vocals in an intriguing hybrid that sits somewhere between Count Basie-styled jazz and headnod lovers’ rock, colourful clavinet organ keys tumbling around one-drop snare patterns, spaced-out dub effects and angelic female backing vocals. Paul St Hilaire’s vocal appearance on “Breezes Blowing’ meanwhile easily represents this collection’s most dub-centred inclusion as well as arguably its biggest highlight, with his signature intimately-miked falsetto gliding ghostlike against slow, skittering snares, heartbeat-like bass pulse and glittering Fender Rhodes keys, before some fantastically sinister spy-jazz meets Black Ark horns drag things to a suitably gritty-sounding conclusion. More than anything else, Moves On shows Spraggon succeeding in imbuing his productions with a bigger, more tangibly “human’ aesthetic; though that said, it’s curious how drummer John Highsted’s crisply-precise breaks almost resemble a human sampler during the more hip-hop centred tracks. Fans of downbeat grooves along the lines of Wicked Beat Soundsystem and the aforementioned Rephrase should find much to appreciate here.
Chris Downton
