Attempting to recreate the golden yesterdays of Jose Padilla’s White Isle sunsets with the tunes of today…

Max Essa / Love’s New Meridian / Is It Balearic?

This is Mr. Essa’s 9th 12 for Is It Balearic? The A-side is actually a dance number, Camel Night-Rate, which comes in a couple of mixes. The first is bouncy and breakbeat-y. Sort of 90s indie rock meets house, a bit “baggy”, largely due to its broken Apache break, but also some Robert Smith / The Cure-like guitar. Plus, its piano has an emotive Primal Scream does gospel edge. In its second half the track picks up a Lemon Interrupt-esque progg-y throb. Be.lanuit ups the cowbell, adds congas, and an operatic choral vocal, a la The Beloved’s Sun Rising. 

Love’s New Meridian, however, is a standout, chillout cut. Introduced by soft synth strings, it steps, stately on slow rattling machine snares. Full of romance, with keys in the spotlight and reminiscent of Jun Fukamachi’s score for Nicole’s `86 catwalk. Coyote’s remix emphasises the 10cc / I’m Not In Love – ness of the synthesised sighs, strips back the beat and echoes the snares. The rhythm, less rigid, now comes in waves. Trippier, more loved-up with a distorted, fuzzy almost shoegaze-y sheen. A groovy bass-line and gated riffs. It finally fades into a field of chirruping tropical  cicadas. 

Leon Todd Johnson / Wa Kei Sei Jaku / Whited Sepulchre Records

Leon Todd Johnson’s wa kei sei jaku takes its inspiration from the practice of Zen meditation, the later works of Ryuichi Sakamoto, and the traditions of the Japanese tea ceremony, or Chado. The latter of which also gives the set its title. 

The EP consists of a quartet of cuts, plus their accompanying instrumentals. They are simple, peaceful pieces for piano, violin and a little fluid upright bass, peppered with the sampled words of tea ceremony master, the Chajin, Mine Somi Kubose. 

Each track, in turn, finds Kubose explaining the four principles at the core of the ritual, set to music that’s a combination of quiet classical and slow, slow gentle jazz. Wa discusses harmony. Kei is concerned with respect, humility, and paired with rapid rippling keys. On Sei, Kubose struggles to find a suitable translation – innocence? Purity? – to super sparse backing. Jaku can be interpreted as tranquility or an inner silence. 

Suitably pensive and patient, with a nod to new age and healing, they are further coloured by field recordings that Johnson captured during a trip to Japan. 

Nick & Samantha  / Club Tropicana / DSPPR

Chris Coco’s mates Nick & Samantha also fly down to Rio for their cover of Wham’s Club Tropicana. Transforming the bright, shiny, 80s pop hit – whose video was famously shot at Ibiza’s Pike’s Hotel – into an acoustic bossa nova ballad. Serenaded by cicadas, and accompanied by cowbell and shakers. The original was a divine dose of dole queue escapism – a 2-fingered salute to Thatcher and her Britain – and this new version too, though rather more wistfully, dreams of an impossibly idyllic holiday.

Coco’s dub is all bass, timbale rattle, tropical storms and the sound of aircraft taking off.  

Suzemeno Tears / Kawaigaranse (HARIKUYAMAKU Remix) / Doyasai Records

Okinawa’s dubmaster, HARIKUYAMAKU, transforms a track from Suzemeno Tears’ latest album of traditional Japanese folk songs. Reimagining the acoustic original as a fluid, flowing river-like rhythm of tumbling, probably programmed, idiophone tones. A friendly battle between balafon, marimba and gamelan gongs. 

TamTam / Love Is Stronger Than Pride / Insense Music Works

Tokyo-based quartet, TamTam turn in a terrific sleepy, stoned, steel pan-led dub of Sade’s Love Is Stronger Than Pride. Warm, fuzzy, hazy with big, graceful, gliding guitar arcs and a roots bass-line, this appeared on a limited 45 – a vinyl sampler for Toru Hashimoto’s Summer-drive Chillout Breeze CD compilation, on Suburbia. 

Tapes / Summer Jam (Live Acid Mix) / EM Records

In 2020, leftfield dub maverick Tapes threw a curveball with a jaunty, jolly, TB-303 cut called Summer Jam. It featured catchy keyboard melodies, Fairlight-like vocals and a conga breakdown, building to a final squelchy solo. EM Records have now repressed the track on a 10”, backed with a really nice Live Acid Mix from 7FO. The Osaka-based artist puts the 303 is put through tighter twists, but he also adds some trebly – The Clash / Joe Strummer doing reggae, say White Man In Hammersmith Palais – skanking rhythm guitar. This later taking on a Robert Smith / The Cure-like quality. In addition the arrangement is chopped to create more changes around the tune’s repetitive hook. The keys, for example, coming in much earlier, while the squelching can’t wait and almost immediately starts.