KORNEL KOVACS 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: Last year Kornel Kovacs returned to his "beautiful, boring" home city of Stockholm, citing a need for both "friends and inspiration". Duly settled in his old apartment, the Studio Barnhus co-founder surrounded himself with collaborators (primarily Matt Karmil, jazz musician Niclas Skagstedt and female vocal duo Rebecca and Fiona) and set to work on his second album, "Stockholm Marathon". The resultant set is impressive, with Kovacs offering up a range of ear-catching vocal and instrumental tracks that brilliantly fuse elements of spacey deep house, mutant R&B, leftfield synth-pop, lo-fi electro, tech-jazz and glassy-eyed electronica. More often than not the collaborations with Rebecca & Fiona hit the mark (see "Club Notes", "Purple Skies" and "Marathon"), but there are plenty of other highlights elsewhere on the album.

Review: In recent times, Studio Barnhus co-founder Kornel Kovacs has delivered a string of eccentric, hard-to-pin-down 12" singles that drag house music in weird and wonderful new directions. He's at it again on Bells, the Swede's long-awaited debut album. While largely deep, melodious and quirkily lo-fi - the distinct sound of tape hiss is never far away - Kovacs nevertheless veers off in many different directions over the album's ten-track direction. So while the pitched-down UK funky rhythms and 8-bit synth melodies of "Josey's Tune" impress, dancefloors may prefer the rambunctious, redlined Latin-house thump of "Gex", the sparkling rave revivalism of "Dance...When The Record Spins", or the rubbery bounce and pulverizing analogue bass of "Pop".