Looky Looky – Flamingo Boots (Dark Entries)

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While Detroit-based electronic duo Looky Looky only emerged with their debut album ‘Part Flamingo’ last year, both members have a lot of musical history behind them; Ian Clark having previously released music as Perspects and as one half of Le Car alongside ADULT’s Adam Miller, and Jeffery Sfire previously releasing tracks as SFIRE alongside Samuel Long. If ‘Part Flamingo’ saw Looky Looky fusing Italo-disco influences with colourful upbeat atmospheres reminiscent of eighties synth soundtracks, ‘Flamingo Boots’ offers up a companion 12” EP that selects four tracks from the album and retools them into extended dance mixes.

While the emphasis on extended intro beats and breakdown sections represents a straight out homage to the classic 12” dance remix archetype, there’s a discernible crisp contemporary edge to the colourful retro-gazing analogue synth arrangements and techno rhythms on show here. Indeed, opening track ‘I’ll Just Be A Minute’ suggests Harold Faltermeyer or Giorgio Moroder’s opening theme for an eighties TV show as much it does a more streamlined Italo-disco laced wander through steel-coiled handclaps and arpeggiated bass sequences. ‘Nurse Coven Rides Again’ meanwhile gets darker and funkier as eerie synth trails wander against icy arpeggiated electronics and a fat electro bassline, delayed-out retro syn-drum hits arcing off a backbone of seemingly airless house rhythms in what’s easily one of the strongest dancefloor workouts here.

Elsewhere, ‘Crotch Rocket’ sees the eighties cop show funk vibes continuing as a fat bassline wanders against electro handclaps and sheeny synth flourishes as crisp breakers’ rhythms push to the forefront of the mix, before ‘The Handoff’ closes this EP with a more stripped-down wander through vaguely New Order-esque synth arrangements and glittering background electronics, the blurred-out pads that form the melodic hook summoning forth the ghost of early 808 State. Homages aside, this impressive EP from Looky Looky manages to stand on its own.

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