Juno Recommends Balearic / Downtempo May 2020

Review: Back in 2017, Thievery Corporation's Rob Garza and Eric Hilton performed a now legendary concert in their home city of Washington D.C in which their band was backed by a fully-fledged orchestra. Three years on, they've decided to commit the orchestrated alterations to album. The results are largely superb, with the pair's slinky dub, lounge music and hip-hop influenced grooves and traditional guest vocals now coming accompanied by orchestral arrangements that veer from the subtle and sympathetic to the swooping, soaring and grandiose. Some of the versions of Thievery Corporation classics are particularly potent, with "Weapons Of Distraction" and "Lebanese Blonde" - one of their most celebrated early cuts - standing out.

Review: Way back in 1988, Italian label Les Folies Art put out a dreamy chunk of Art Of Noise style ambient experimentalism by Quiet Force called "Listen To The Music". It's long been in-demand amongst Balearic collectors for its unique fusion of Fairlight-manipulated vocal samples, glistening guitars, sparse beats, snaking clarinet lines, jaunty fretless bass and new age synthesizers, so this licensed reissue on Rogue Cat Sounds is long overdue. This time round, the duo's original "For Love & Emotions" version comes backed by two fresh remixes. Justin Strauss and Max Pask turn it into a deliciously dreamy chunk of acid-fired early morning house, while Apiento & Tepper re-imagine it as a slick and seductive instrumental Sade B-side.

Review: Back in 2017, Thievery Corporation's Rob Garza and Eric Hilton performed a now legendary concert in their home city of Washington D.C in which their band was backed by a fully-fledged orchestra. Three years on, they've decided to commit the orchestrated alterations to album. The results are largely superb, with the pair's slinky dub, lounge music and hip-hop influenced grooves and traditional guest vocals now coming accompanied by orchestral arrangements that veer from the subtle and sympathetic to the swooping, soaring and grandiose. Some of the versions of Thievery Corporation classics are particularly potent, with "Weapons Of Distraction" and "Lebanese Blonde" - one of their most celebrated early cuts - standing out.

Review: The generous run of Zero 7 reissues continues with the welcome return of their 2006 LP "The Garden". While it received something of a frosty reception on release, this album has refined with age to become a fan favourite and an all-round wonderfully accomplished work that highlights all the best qualities of Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker. From lush, starry-eyed and '60s tinged psychedelia to bittersweet pop and plenty of lounge-ready moods, it's incredibly easy to sink into like all the Zero 7 material, but shot through with depth to keep you listening attentively. Sia also makes some standout appearances, not least "Throw It All Away" and "Waiting To Die", while Jose Gonzalez is on stunning form too. Fans have been waiting a long time for this, and no doubt there will be plenty more converts to the Zero 7 sound too.

Review: Following a couple of decent but arguably overlooked 12" singles, Tecwaa has decided the time is right to drop his debut album. The Swedish artist proceeds to languidly shuffle through evocative, occasionally icy tracks that variously draw influence from deep house, 1980s wave music, spiritual jazz, leftfield synth-pop, trippy electronica and chugging psychedelic disco. It's an interesting and entertaining set, with each success delay-laden track delivering a new twist on his hard-to-pigeonhole late night/early morning sound. By the time the bubbly, acid flecked "Those Cosmic Plains" rounds the album off, you'll be ready to listen to it all over again.

Review: For the final part of his epic reissue series, Ulrich Schnauss has taken the chance to re-master and refresh 2016 set "No Further Ahead Than Today", which is now known as "No Further Ahead Than Tomorrow". As with its predecessors, the freshly polished set sounds gorgeous, with Schnauss adding extra sparkle to such positive and life-affirming downtempo gems as "Melts Into Air", the wall-of-sound shuffle of "The Magic In You", the undulating, morning-fresh ambient techno bliss of "New Day Starts At Dawn" and "Negative Sunrise", where Steve Reich style melodic refrains and Pat Metheny guitars vie for sound space alongside chiming melodies, crunchy beats and grandiose, enveloping synthesizer motifs. Even by Schnauss' standards, it's a big-sounding album, but that's certainly no bad thing.

Review: 19 years ago, Ulrich Schnauss became one of the most celebrated new artists in electronic music when he released debut album "Far Away Trains Passing By", a gorgeous and life-affirming set that cheerily joined the dots between IDM, picturesque electronica and shuffling downtempo grooves. As part of his current reissue project (five albums have been given the re-master treatment), Schnauss has decided to reissue it. The main set sounds as alluring and life-affirming as ever, but the real bonus for fans is the inclusion of no less than nine previously unreleased cuts recorded in the same period. These aren't cast-offs or throwaways, either, but rather tracks every bit as good as those that were originally releases.

Review: Hear & Now's 2018 debut album, "Aurore Baleare", was to our ears one of the best things Claremont 56 has put out in recent years, which is high praise given the label's notoriously high standards. "Alba Sol", the experienced Italian duo's follow-up, is arguably even better. Wisely, they've subtly tweaked their slow-motion, sun-kissed Balearic disco template to include more sounds and grooves associated with the Italian dream house sound of the late '80s and early '90s, as well as nods towards cosmic disco and the groovier end of the West Coast rock spectrum. It's a blend that results in a string of inspired cuts that are capable of putting a smile on the face of even the most miserable of listeners. Recommended!

Review: Ulrich Schnauss' re-mastered reissue series continues with a fresh edition of 2007 set "Goodbye", an album that saw him incorporate guitars and vocals for the very first time. Of course, these aren't standard guitars, and the 12 tracks stretched out across the CD draw more influence from the Cocteau Twins and Seefeel than they do rock or indie-pop records. By combining these glistening guitar sounds with his usual gorgeous synthesizers, ambient chords and gentle electronic beats, Schnauss delivered an album that was notably different from its lauded predecessors while still remaining in the same sonic ballpark. While it received mixed reviews at the time, "Goodbye" remains a gorgeous and largely life-affirming set that's well worth further investigation (especially now it sounds better than ever due to some fine re-mastering work).

Review: Catching Flies' debut album "Silver Linings" was a gently eclectic and hard-to-pigeonhole affair - think soulful fusions of hip-hop, house, jazz and electronica - so it makes perfect sonic sense that this remixed version should include revisions by an impressively diverse array of artists. There are naturally a clutch of more dancefloor-centric reworks - see Andhim's hypnotic, tech-tinged deep house take on "Opals", Ron Basejam's deep jazz-house version of "New Gods", a bustling breakbeat pass of "Satisfied" by Soundbwoy Killah and DJ Seinfeld's deliciously saucer-eyed, rave-friendly re-imagining of "Silver Linings" - as well as a clutch of more downtempo-minded tweaks. Highlights in the latter category include a bluesy "Ambient Reprise" of "Satisfied" and Freddie Joachim's delightfully dusty, slow-motion version of "Kite Hill Theme".

Review: Ulrich Schnauss spent much of last year re-mastering his catalogue for re-release. On "A Long Way To Fall: Rebound", he's gone one step further, re-building, re-recording and reworking 2013 album "A Long Way To Fall" in order to finally get it sounding the way he's always wanted it to. It was always a fine album of course - a beautiful mix of sparkling, unusual instrumentation, bubbly electronic beats, grandiose themes and sumptious ambient soundscapes - but this 2020 edition sounds and flows even better than the original. This in part due to the crystal-clear clarity and surround sound style mixing, but also down to some of the subtle melodic and instrumental changes employed by Schnauss. If you're a fan, you need this in your life.

Review: On its initial release in 2003, Ulrich Schnauss' second album "A Strangely Isolated Place" caused something of a stir, with many critics naming it amongst their highlights of the year. Listening back to this freshly remastered edition, it's easy to see why. It was the first time that Schnauss really nailed his now trademark sound, mixing ultra-bright, life-affirming electronic melodies with stirring ambient chords, gentle (but often distorted) beats, jangling guitars, audible nods towards shoegaze and warm basslines that drive the tracks forward. To our ears "A Strangely Isolated Place" remains his strongest album and thanks to Schnauss' smart re-mastering work, it has never sounded better.

Review: Having made their name via a series of open-minded events in London, DJ duo Earthly Measures have decided to launch a record label. The imprint's first release is a quietly impressive collection of cuts inspired by "sounds from all corners of the globe", with a line-up of artists to match (think Equador, Argentina, Brazil, Australia and the UK). Musically, what's on offer is largely gentle, seductive and soothing, combining traditional instruments (and sometimes field recordings) with contemporary electronics and a variety of shuffling, chugging rhythms. There's much to admire throughout, from the pastoral, musically detailed bliss of Carrot Green's "Outra Metropole" and the slo-mo quirkiness of Dreems' "Flat Earth", to the opaque warmth and shuffling beats of Joaquin Cornejo's "Komorebi" and the chant-sporting ethno-house hypnotism of Ibu Selva's "Taperendy".