Axel Boman: LUZ / Quest for Fire

On both albums, sampled choruses reverberate, basses rumble, and strings and synth pads quiver like spring flowers in the breeze. vintage easy listening dub lots of songs with a hint of sticky-sweet juice. There's a real sense of physicality to Boman's sounds, which he applies with thick, dark strokes. If you could run your fingers across his virtual canvas, you'd spot watery congas and midrange swirls and tiny hi-hats with strums that rub to the touch. Quirky details are woven into the fabric of the music: In the silky, ecstatic “Grape,” a hard hit brings your shot crashing past the net in a game of ping pong. on the disco epic 'Sottopassaggio', Boman turns the knob on the delay unit so hard that spacetime threatens to come apart at the seams. The beats range from languid slo-mo to speedy cocaine, but mostly she hangs in the midrange, Latin accents and disco flare accentuating her outline. steady son clave patterns pepper both albums like conga-line morse code. And ifBoman seems to be asking us, Were cruise ships really cool?

Luz is, by a small margin, the more upbeat of the two records. On the dub breakbeat house anthem “BHUKA,” South African singer Kamohelo (of the Barnhus-signed band Off the Meds) raps in gravelly triplets over starfish arpeggios. the submerged bass line evokes the feeling of walking on air, suggesting a spiritual affinity with “Purple Drank,” Boman's smash hit in 2010. On the narcotic “Gröna Dalen,” the swelling bass soaks up the lite-funk squelch and harp glissandi of soft-focus Swedish romantic movements like quicksand. on “Atra”, cowbells and a sun-warmed sax solo embody the record's pleasant vibes. Boman comes closest to going full gonzo on “Out Sailing,” a tumultuous pastiche of yacht rock and French house whose giddy chorus (“My love is out sailing!”) is the only potentially divisive moment in any album. As with frozen blue dakiris, you may want to measure your intake at first to see how it fits you.

Not everything Luz is it so tongue in cheek; the enveloping, bass-heavy “Edgeware Road” almost feels like an attempt to create a fast techno version of one of Yo La Tengo's most patient and sensitive ballads, and Search for Fire, Boman becomes even more emotional. “One Two” plays madcaps of gloomy chords, recalling the lullabies of starry-eyed French eccentric Pépé Bradock. “Stone Age Jazz” sets bird-like trills to rosy background vocals and lawn whistling, a perfect picture of poolside idyll. Search for Fire hosts much of the slower material – like “Cacti Is Plural,” a shadowy, acid-tinged track in the duo's early '00s tradition album/you-dont-know-me” class=”external-link” data-event-click=”{"element":"ExternalLink","outgoingURL":"https://closermusik.bandcamp.com/album/you-dont-know-me"}” href=”https://closermusik.bandcamp.com/album/you-dont-know-me” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>Closer music and before that, the more eerie edges of the Rephlex catalogue—but also features the fastest: “Jeremy Irons,” a hard-driving track that turns a stripped-down disco loop into one of the year's heaviest techno behemoths.