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

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these “Chocolate Milk” round ups. The chilled stuff that I’ve listened to has tended to come from albums, and those releases have then got their own “stand alone” reviews. However, here are a few isolated singles, and highlights from long-players that I didn’t get a chance to cover in full. 

Mark Barrott / Otono

A minimal short composed for Wold Piano Day, Otono, is just Mark, his keys and reverb. The latter worthy of Grouper’s Ruins. The piece also shares, with that album, the same feel of slowly waltzing the rooms of a family summer house, empty, closed, out of season. A sense of reflecting, lovingly recalling past laughter and smiles.

Bart & Baker / Con Thuyen / Wargram

Bart & Baker are a French production duo, who seem to be super successful, but I have to admit they were completely new to me. Here they collaborate with Vietnamese chanteuse Vy Phuong for a very cool, cocktail lounge jazz cover of a local standard called Con Thuyen. Slinky and ultra polished, with a seductive bass-line groove, strummed guitar and Fender Rhodes sympathetically spotlight Phuong’s romantic, wounded femme fatale. Chris Coco also supplies a remix that’s subtly, slightly more chilled. The single is around to stream, and apparently there’s an album coming in June. 

Yeong Die / Hvor? / ESP Institute

Hvor? is my favourite moment from Yeong Die’s recent ESP Institute long-player, Uncapturable. It’s an album full of complex, intricate sound design, but this particular piece is a simple, sublime Roedelius-like synthesised pastoral. It briefly bursts into busy bubbling, but when it does it remans bucolic and beautiful. 

DJ Disse / Don’t You Know (Psyko Guitar Mix) / Music For Dreams

Frantz Thomasen aka DJ Disse is a long-standing Music For Dreams family member, having first worked with the Danish imprint in 2004. Following an extended break, of something close to 20 years, he has recently returned to the fold with a downtempo dose of dub techno titled Don’t You Know. Deliciously delayed, sedated and stoned, there’s a mix doing the rounds that’s graced by some truly great, cracking Clapton-esque blues guitar. The slow rolling 6-minute solo is something for thoughts to sink into, and really lifts the track out of the ordinary. The mood a tad darker than MFD’s usual fare. Its nocturnal nostalgia sipping a whiskey, while staring out to sea. Watching the moon and remembering sins it would perhaps rather forget. 

Dobrawa Czocher / Blue / 130701

Blue is a single taken from Polish cellist Dobrawa Czocher’s second album State Of Matter. Inspired by a move to the Baltic Coast, and conceptually concerned with “water, movement and flux”, the piece – to the classically untrained ear – appears constructed solely from cello. Rapid, rhythmic patterns and scratched strained strings provide an anxious backing, accompanying a more traditionally bowed mournful melody. Aching, emotive and terribly cinematic, towards its close the composition introduces Czocher’s ethereal wordless vocals, her harmonies multi-tracked into an angelic choir.  

Leroy Hutson / The Ghetto `74 / Home Of The Good Groove

Having spent the last 5 or 6 years digging, lost in, dub and techno, I am beginning to tentatively dips my toes back into music that’s more “organic”, and this caught my ear – thinking it could fit neatly into a funky, feel good sunset session. An instrumental take of The Ghetto, a song that was a big Donny Hathaway hit, lifted from Leroy Hutson’s album The Man!, it’s a lovely, organ-led shot of laidback, opulently orchestrated soul. Colour comes from party shouts, hand claps, bumping Backstabbers Philly brass and the odd sax solo. 

Agustin Pereyra Lucena / Ese Dia Va A Llegar / Far Out

I once paid a small fortune for a Brazilian copy of this. Luckily for the rest of you, Far Out are doing a much more reasonably priced Record Store Day repress. Originally released in 1975, Ese Die Va A Lleger, finds Buenos Aires musician Agustin Pereyra Lucena covering a few Brazilian classics, and creating a few more of his own. The title track is a funky, Spanish (guitar) leaning groove, backed by berimbau and crazy, squeaking cuica, and that continually breaks into a joyful hippie happening chorus. The picked and strummed Hace Pocos Anos rivals The Pharcyde’s favourite bossa nova, Stan Getz and Luiz Bonfá’s Saudade Vem Correndo. Guayabas is a fusion lullaby, full of little electric touches, while the version of Joao Donato’s Amazonas is essential swinging, scatted easy-listening. Everyone involved is a maestro. I recently had a clear out of my Brazilian vinyl hoard, but this one’s a definite keeper. 

Salamanda / Basil / Music To Watch Seeds Grow By

Korean duo Salamanda are the latest artists to contribute to the highly collectable cassette series Music To Watch Seeds Grow By. Composed while imagining a day in the life of their windowsill Basil plant, several of the 7 pieces are peaceful, playful, arrangements of keys, gongs, congas and bell-like chimes. In places their pitter patter resembles spots of summer rain, and at times could be mistaken for Midori Takeda’s virtuosity. Introduce My Atom Which Is My Favorite One recalls the work of other Japanese musical pioneers. In this case, the song’s strange clipped, glitched sounds call to mind Inoyama Land. Its circuitry chattering, chirruping like alien wildlife. Basil Dream has gentle guitar picking act as a guide through a stream of soothing, layered hushed sequences. Sonics that simultaneously run both backward and forwards. The Blue Wine features bubbles mimicking, describing the movement of water through xylem and phloem. Plus the zing of a heavenly harp. 

Haiku Salut & Meg Morley / The Lost Score / Lo Recordings

A collaboration between pianist Meg Morley and electronica trio Haiku Salut, The Lost Score, is a really interesting album. Conceived as an alternative soundtrack to the 1930 film Menschen am Sonntag / People On Sunday – which documents Berlin before The Nazis – the pieces, born out of live performance, mix a whole host of classical and IDM influences. Needle Drop is the standout for me. An intricate, delicate syncopation of busy bleeps and keys. With bigger chords carrying a steadily uplifting melody, it has that magical mid-90s techno thing going on, a knife edge balance of urgency and introspection. 

Santino Surfers / Bluebird Bolero / Music For Dreams

Bluebird Bolero sees Santino Surfers’ Jonas Krag showcasing his sublime Peter Green-esque guitar picking. His strings’ tender tremolo wailing set to a shuffling beat. Switching between Chris Rea and Carlos Santana-like licks, instantly summoning sunny summer skies.