Kelman Duran — 13th Month

The Hotel Caimanera in Cuba. It's painted yellow and blue. Arches, French windows, wooden floors. A swimming pool with a shallow section for children. There are thousands of these. The inoffensive, packaged resorts we task reggaeton with filling. And even by those standards, Caimanera is gaudy. It looks like somebody tried to represent Luis Fonsi's 'Despacito' in sculpture.

It also happens to sit less than a mile from the Guantanamo Bay detention centre. Caimanera's website boasts that you can see the base from their balconies. If they have a poolside playlist, Kelman Duran had better be on it.

It's all too easy to compare 13th Month to the work of British producer Burial. Both artists make use of heavily obscured vocals. Both use the pops and scratches of vinyl as percussion. Both provoke strong feelings of loneliness. But that's where the comparison ends. Substitute Burial's midnight cityscapes for lush natural environments. Transform the depressiveness into searing anxiety.

A seismic shift emerges occurs between the two works' content. The loneliness of Burial has always belonged to the listener. Duran's work transposes this onto the imagined subjects of his work. Pursued, harassed, endangered. Given form by some stunning vocal collaborators. You hear the urgency of people whose lives are nothing but running, running, running.

The vocal samples themselves fall like footsteps. Short, sharp explosions of sound that complement 13th Month's dembow riddims. There is something of Swedish DJ The Field here. Where their loops are ordered and robotic, however, Duran's are wild and frantic.

This panic, scattered over so many styles, imitates the unsolvable vastness of social disparity. 13th Month is a moral assault. Voices of victims drowned in noise. You are culpable and unable to help. The suffering blends into a formless and ungraspable whole.

The album closes gently. Rhythm gives way to atmosphere and ambience. Have they stopped; given up? Did they fall? Or is this an imagined future in which nobody is forced to run? Duran leaves these questions hanging in the silence.

In the spirit of The Knife’s Shaking the Habitual, Gaika and with sprinklings of The Field. Available for streaming and purchase here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Lighght — The Skin Falls Off The Body

You expect efficiency from an artist named after a single-word Aram Saroyan poem. And, true to their name, Lighght's brisk debut EP doesn't waste a second. Opener 'Hang Nail' punches into a disordered evocation of early Aphex Twin. Further tracks follow suit, fed out as short drips of uncomfortable, jittering chaos. The taunting playground-dread of Come To Daddy casts a long shadow. But Lighght manages to burn through with a distinctive organic timbre.

Aphex conjured images of otherworldly metals clanging together; the ineffability of an hallucinogenic experience. By contrast, The Skin Falls Off The Body grounds itself in the physical. Somewhere between club and abattoir. Negative space and arrhythmia fill airy cavities. These tracks rattle through the chest, march goosebumps over its surface. A shattering corporeality ensures every beat, screech and snarl lands with full force. The sheer, body-pulping impact of this work is difficult to resist.

Lighght retains your attention like it's nothing. Ethereal atmospheres are interrupted by blasts of noise the second they settle. The effect: a jumpscare-pocked horror which forbids passive listening. A cleansing examination of our relationship with our own bodies. A unique new voice that’s still just clearing its throat.

This unsettling EP should please fans of Aphex Twin, Autechre, Klein and Jlin. Available for streaming and purchase here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

James Blake — Assume Form

The most immediate confontation presented by Assume Form is its cover. A visual callback to James Blake's Klavierwerke EP (and later his self-titled LP). Back then, blurs and smears smothered a monochromatic portrait. Here, Blake looks us dead-on, in full colour, undistorted. The image is arresting in its normality. This is the artist living by his words; assuming form.

In some sense the music reflects this. The twelve tracks on this record represent a broader bid for mainsteam appeal than yet seen. The whispiness and weirdness of Blake's early career is shrugged off. This comes as no surprise -- Blake's artistic trajectory has been unidirectional. A slow abandonment of the minimal and mysterious. A greater emphasis on catchy vocal hooks, beats and basslines. But what is pleasantly surprising is Blake's forthright and candid lyricism. The mask has been shed and Blake bravely exposes himself. His strength as a lyricist buoys material which from other mouths may have clanged.

Assume Form is a more successful attempt at a mainstream style than 2016's insipid The Colour in Anything -- but it still lacks power. What's more, the same issue plagues Assume Form as its predecessor. Namely, a few memorable tracks have the burden of propping up some forgettable duds. The difference is that Blake has shaved thirty minutes. But this leads to a worrisome question. Is the greatest strength of Assume Form that it doesn't outstay its welcome?

Tracks like 'Into the Red' and 'Where's the Catch?' cast these worries aside. A blinding André 3000 feature injects much-needed joie de vivre. Some material is the strongest Blake has produced since 2011. And the album is as beautifully-produced as you’d expect. But newcomers will likely be underwhelmed. And as ever, fans are left craving greater consistency and experimentation. Until Blake delivers this, Assume Form will have to do.

Curious newcomers should seek out James Blake’s Klavierwerke EP, Enough Thunder, and self-titled LP. Assume Form available for streaming and purchase here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe