Aahhh, youth. There’s something about being young that feels like having the world at your feet. However, if Young Montana? doesn’t have at least part of it at his feet soon, something has gone very wrong. With his debut LP Limerance, the Coventry, UK 20 yr. old fuses together a hyper collage of rapid fire sample slicing and manipulation, taking us on an exhilarating journey into modern music production.
Beginning innocently with birdsong and synth glitches, “In Finite” perhaps displays the freshness of what is on show here: a fresh start from an exiting new talent. “Sacre Cool” starts slow, but quickly builds in pace, as Young Montana? clearly displays his hand in sample trickery. “Dreamhome” flashes Montana’s inner Prefuse73, rapid sliced vocals carrying the melody in all manner of pitch-shifted guises. “Bad.day” goes all soul, mellowing out just enough for the muted horns to ride through underneath the Scott Walker style vocal. Euro-synth lines ring out across “Mynnd’s” beginning, a wonky beat underpinning long notes, before syncopated clicks and drum hits shift into high gear as growling synths move in. This is certainly the LP’s production highlight thus far, shifting through four different stanzas without missing a beat for a second. Tasty stuff. Stuttering piano rolls above more woozy synth on “Hot Heathrr” before a stomping beat shoves all else from its path, and proceedings take shape Chris Clark style. “Repetition” gets its LA left-field hip-hop on, and is simply begging for a killer MC to be strapped across the top. Montana sees us off with “Connct” a music box shoved into a blender of bamboo wind chimes, bass hits and squiggly synth leads. As it fizzles to a stop, i found myself starting the disc again a little too often.
As mere reference points, I hear alot of Prefuse73 and Chris Clark shining through intermittently, but far for being accusational of sorts, to list an artist on debut on par with such luminaries is nothing but high praise. Limerance displays remarkable maturity and depth for an artist Young Montana’s age, weaving a playful yet complex tapestry of beats and samples into a dizzying vista of thoroughly entertaining music. Get it.
Nick Giles
