Johannesburg-based electronic producer / multi-instrumentalist Joao Orecchia is certainly a guy who delights in the unexpected ‘mistakes’ and accidents inherent in musical performance, his meticulously detailed tracks fusing digitally recomposed improvisations on live instruments including banjo, drums, melodica and toy instruments with unpredictably glitchy electronics and buzzing digital detritus. This second album on Other Electricities arrives four years after his preceding ‘Motherless Brooklyn’ collection for Blankrecords and sees Orecchia working with a brace of guest collaborators, including former Playdoe / BLK JKS member Spoek Mathambo and Anticon’s Serengeti. It’s also a record that comes dedicated to Orecchia’s recently deceased father, with two recorded performances by him singing standards ‘When I Fall In Love’ and ‘Arrivederci Roma’ acting as appropriate bookends to the twelve tracks collected here.
Indeed, it’s slightly eerie and certainly evocative as the vintage dusty grooves of the former track suddenly burst into a swirl of colourful, fuzzed-out synths, lazy brass and clattering leftfield hiphop rhythms that calls to mind one of Subtle’s more kaleidoscopic backings. From there, ‘Midnight Serenade’ sees warm funk bass grooves and metallic banjo strings being pushed through all manner of timestretching and digital contortion as rich backing horns rise up into the mix in an offering that calls to mind Tortoise’s languid post-rock/jazz meeting Mouse On Mars’ gnarled electronics head-on, before the catchy ‘Play Pretend’ sees Spoek Mathambo adding his smooth falsetto pop vocal to an airy backing of colourful melodic synths and skittering, off-centre dance rhythms that’s easily one of this album’s most immediately accessible moments.
Elsewhere, the forlorn-sounding ‘De Los Muertos’ takes things down into fractured and glitchy electronic blues, winding spidery banjo tones around rich live strings and metallic percussion as crunching hiphop rhythms power their way beneath, while ‘All Opera’ sees Serengeti’s dense MC flow unfurling over a smooth, laidback backing of ratchety DSP effects, lazy live bass and swirlig strings, before things suddenly shift into a stuttering electro-pop section that ends up bolstered by muscular live hiphop drum breaks, in what’s easily one of this album’s biggest highlights. An excellent second album from Joao Orecchia that should particularly appeal to fans of the likes of Subtle and Odd Nosdam’s similarly crackle-heavy leftfield hiphop-centred electronics.
Chris Downton
