Crashing – well, sliding, inkily with an easy stealth – into the current wave of moody ambience around us at the moment comes Joe Cornwell in his GhostChant guise. Gaining tip sheet nods from the ever reliable tastemaker Rob Da Bank and support slots for Kieran Hebden aka Four Tet, it’s easy to see why his star is rising. What we have here is a clearly talented producer who’s done the decent thing and written some good material to go along with the knob-twiddling dexterity.
Concisely named opener ‘Intro‘ tips its hat in the general direction of ‘Les Nuits‘ by Nightmares On Wax; deliciously warm, all-enveloping strings and all. Seemingly coming at you through a rainy night it’s all too brief at a shade under two minutes but hey, the keyboard can stand up to being bashed about for repeated plays. Or rewinds in the land of the groovy. Allow your reviewer to at least approximate habitation in such a lofty location. When you get such beauty on the first of sixteen tracks making up this debut album hopes are high.
Does the rest match up? Yeah, it pretty much does. The one thing holding the whole back as a piece is perhaps its lack of originality. Many, including the very next song ‘Sincerity‘ touch on the sort of early night, mid to late nineties breakbeat and drum and base put forward by the likes of Grooverider, some pre-Mercury Roni Size and the mellower moments of 4 Hero. Records with a jazzier, less aggressive feel that made it acceptable to house-heads more at home to chugging along to Masters At Work.
It’s enjoyably soulful and atmospheric with an array of quacks and haunting vocals drifting in and out of the mix. Balearic fiends will love it, as will coffee table clubbers appreciating its impressive complexity. Ideal chill music also. If you have wine-tasting coming up where talk is likely to turn to that time you all went down the rabbit hole and ended up in Dalston three days after going out then this is the album for you.
Outwith that, does it add anything overtly novel to the musical smorgasbord? Possibly not, but it’s a very pleasurable excursion into the world of someone who knows how to press the buttons, both literal and emotional. The yearning vocal of ‘Laid To Rest’ pulls us in to a place of slightly disorientating wonder.
That disorientation, also apparent on ‘Ocean’s Between‘ featuring FiFi Rong, is when things get most interesting. With such talent in creating sonic landscapes, a sense of unease making at least occasional appearances amongst the polite hip-swaying keeps the listener on their toes. And it needs that. We all want warmth, love and honey – we also need our head and soul fucked with from time to time. A bit of grip to keep things interesting. Tip-toeing along that fine line between honed sophistication and, “I could imagine this in my high end dentist’s ante chamber“, is a perilous feat to attempt.
So there we have it. This is a marvellously enjoyable record. Delicious, even. It just isn’t the new new. Perhaps one should simply head back to track seven, ‘Habituary‘ and take guidance from the lyrics laid forth by the excellently monikered SpaceGhostPurrp: hard to imagine a current release more suited to “Smoking reefer [and] having sexy love“.
On pure pleasure principle alone this effort would earn 4 out of 5 stars however, due to that undoubted talent not being pushed really out there…
[Rate:3.5]
