Juno Recommends Balearic / Downtempo: November 2023

Review: Alex Albrecht makes a superb debut here on A Strangely Isolated Place with an album of the sort of absorbing ambient beauty that the label is so well revered for. It's style is light and array, with hazy edges and dreamscape spuds slowing but surely lifting the spirits and take you on a trip through the great outdoors - bird calls, swirling breezes, looping piano phrases and pastoral downtempo signifiers all feature throughout Violet Visionary. It's a great mix of delicate percussive elements and powerful drum patterns that are coloured by soft hues of a rising of sinking sun depending on your mindset.

Review: The diffuse hues and retro-feeling colours of the artwork on this new 45rpm from Star Creature perfectly embody the downtempo and Balearic sounds within. They come from A Vision Of Panorama who seems to ever more have the dance floor in sights over his last few releases. That's not to say these are banging tunes - but they do have lovely grooves. 'Piano Sunset' is a real spine tingler with 80s keys and mid tempo drums that come alive with crisp hits and a fresh bassline. 'Lost In Palms' then has a shuffling and low slung groove with nice wet hits. Add in some more lush chords and you have a real pearler.

Review: Belgian jazz singer Melanie Di Biasio first came to light around 2007 on Igloo, but she's since fostered a steady relationship with indie giants [PIAS] which has resulted in two subsequent albums, No Deal and Lilies. After a six-year gap, she returns with a new set which finds her edging into intriguing new territory. Il Viaggio is framed as 'a quest for musical, physical, and spiritual renewal, born from an emotional memory awakened'. Make of that what you will, but the music contained within finds her voice framed by a broad spectrum of sonics as she leads us through two distinct halves across two discs - Lay Your Ear To The Rail and The Chaos Azure.

Review: Emotional Rescue turn their attention to Rare Silk and their sublime cult classic "Storm". It's one of those rare tracks with a wonderful otherworldly quality that manages to be smooth and accessible, and somehow not like anything you've ever heard before. It must be somewhere in the mix, between the dreamy harmonized vocals, lush instrumentation and curious sense of space. The original on the A side is a treat enough, but then throw in a mercurial dubbed out version by Arp on the flip and you've got yourself a 12 inch portal to a most delightful dimension.

Review: If you've ever wondered how much Balearic you can get on one 12" then this one might answer the question. Arriving on Cala Tarida Musica, it finds Residentes Balearicos pair up with bonafide Ibizan legend DJ Alfredo for a sizzling summer anthem. 'Sundown' is pure Ibiza house bliss with wavy grooves and majestic jazzy keys that bring the joyful good times. Balearic boss man Chris Coco then steps up with his wavy and elegant Sueno Mediterraneo remix as well as a To The Bone dub that is even deeper and more smooth and last of all is a SIRS mix with a more raw edge and urban atmosphere.

Review: This neat slice of mashup-Balearic from BJ Smith is a clever exercise in sample combination. First released in 2013 but reissued again here, we hear two iconic hip-hop tracks - Mos Def's 'Umi Says' and The Pharcyde's 'Runnin' - both laid to serene, lackadaisical Balearic backings. Thus two sunrise classics were born, complementing a very particular kind of rave.

Review: Moloko Island is the debut album from Mike Salta & Mortale on Music For Dreams label and is the soundtrack to a getaway world "where good vibes can float freely" and "only fantasy set the limits." The tracks here are made up of those you may have heard on some more Balearic dance floors in the recent past as well as plenty of new ones. The open is a buoyant groove full of the joys of hope and optimism as you set out on any new adventure and from there you can sink back into 'Bon Abanut', have a gentle boogie to 'Yaeyama' and gaze up on the stars while lost in the magic of 'Bye Moloko.'

Review: In Royskopp's wider musical arc, Senior is an often overlooked moment due to its sombre, introspective mood. Given their popularity soared on the breezy accessibility of Melody AM and Junior, it's commendable the Norwegian duo chose to head in a different direction for their fourth album and deliver a counterpoint to their previous outings they described as "more autumnal". That's not to say Senior is a challenging listen at all - it's still marked out by swooning melodic composition and a tender approach to sound design, but it's certainly one for drawn-in nights and misty mornings. This new edition of the 2010 album on Cooking Vinyl comes pressed in heavyweight orange for your listening and viewing pleasure.

Review: Away from all the bluster about trip hop. Maxinquaye ranks as one of the greatest albums to emerge from the UK at any time in history. Tricky was already well entrenched in Bristol's musical community following his tenure with Massive Attack, but he delivered something more potent and daring than the smooth, soul-rooted sound of his counterparts. There are spiky edges and imperfections, beats that sound like they're about to buckle at the knees and that unmistakable, hoarse flow. That's not even mentioning the stunning voice of Martina Topley-Bird serving as a fierce sparring partner for Tricky's blunted flows. Heart-breakingly beauty and a dank, street-level reality enmesh in sheer perfection from start to finish, and now this landmark album is getting the 'Super Deluxe' treatment across three records with all kinds of additional mixes, outtakes, demos and more.

Review: Mood Hut's semi-regular forays into ambient-adjacent territory are always worth checking, largely for their preference for hallucinatory sounds, new age melodies and loved-up textures over academic concepts and po-faced experimentalism. Their latest chill-out room friendly missive, which comes courtesy of Chinese producer Knopha, embraces this approach while also offering nods to his own off-kilter dancefloor productions. So, opener 'Fizz', a languid, post-club shuffler, is followed by the jazz-flecked, opiate ambient soul of 'The Light', and the sun-bright joy of 'Mizu Le Gout', where loose-limbed breakbeats, star-burst melodies and cut-up vocal snippets catch the ear. Arguably best of all, though, is the EP-closing 'Corundrum', where Mediterranean guitar sounds and echoing electronic motifs cluster around a UK garage-influenced ambient house groove.

Review: Elsewhere Jr 1 is aims to bring "something a little different, something a little out there" to the listener, and indeed it does. This double LP compilation brings together both new and old compositions from a wide range of countries, with the unique twist that they were all made for young'uns; kids; children; tykes; little ones. 2.5 years in the making, this international project heard its makers thoroughly scour the archives for every strange children's music curio, from Belgium to Denmark, extracting a surprising amount of cosmic weirdness from the works.

Review: Don't let the playful, tongue-in-cheek title put you off; this EP does not contain 'Balearic gabba', should such a thing exist, but rather a quartet of largely dancefloor focused remixes of delightful downtempo cuts from the Hell Yeah! Recordings catalogue. SIRS steps up first to deliver a chugging, Italo-disco-goes-Balearic re-make of Carmel 3000's 'Super Rapido', before we're treated to one of Calm's TB-303-laden 'mellow acid' dubs, this time of Sergio Messina & The Four Twenties' gorgeous, soft and sun-soaked 'Sometimes Remember'. Over on side B, Feel Fly delivers a soft-focus Balearic deep house take on Pedro Bertho and Mariana Gehring's 'Tornei', while DJ Spun's revision of My Friend Dario's 'Acid Mosquito in a Summer Night' is a twisted, genuinely psychedelic dub disco excursion.

Review: Italy's foremost investigator of 60s and 70s library music and jazz fusion sounds can do no wrong if you ask us. Everything they put out is sumptuous whether it's an old reissue or a new outing. Here we have the pair of bassist Federico Amorosi and keys, synth and programming wizard Valerio Lombardozzi cooking up some brilliant blends of cosmic funk and Italo disco, all with fresh flavours from soundtracks and synthporn from days gone. The A-side is an instrumental with a lush mid-tempo groove and the flip has a more infectious dance sound.

Review: Electronic duo Tosca (Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber), based in Vienna, was founded in the fallout of the success of the former's Kruder & Dorfmeister project - albeit during a time when Dorfmeister wanted to explore other sonic worlds. Now, they've come a long way since then; and a testament to this endurance comes in the form of their most recent album Mirage. Named after a tiny cafe in Vienna - halfway between Rupert's home and the Tosca studio - the album also takes its namesake from the alternative word for a fata morgana, i.e. the optical illusion of strange shapes sometimes glimpsed on distant ocean horizons. All that in mind, we're met here with a full-length remix project of the original album, in keeping with a longstanding tradition that every album of theirs hears a remix.

Review: Scene-leading downtempo outfit Zero 7 aka producers Henry Binns and Sam Hardake have pretty large reservers of classic chill out sounds in their arsenal by now. It is filled with blissed out delights that have soundtracked countless stoner sessions and high profile ads. Their debut album 'Simple Things' sold over a million copies and was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and further albums in the years since have been just as successful. 'Home' is a single from 2019 that now gets repressed for the first time on lovely 10" coloured vinyl.

Review: The Very Polish Cut Outs mostly deals in inspired re-edits and reworks of obscure old musical gems from Poland. This time out Pejzaz aka Bartosz Kruczynski makes his mark once more with a brilliant new collage album that comes in two parts. This first one will be followed by the second later in November and is a deep dive into the world of 90s and early noughties Eastern European CD releases. It's made from millions of samples and features pop rock licks, sunny chords, dreamy folk sounds, astral melodies and lots of rich textures that make it a superb new take on the Baltic Beat.

Review: Jurgen Paape has a brilliantly characterful sound and wrote one of our favourite silly records in 'Ofterschwang' some 13 years ago (go check it out, it's brilliant.) We're glad to hear some new music from the long time Kompakt legend and co-founder and once again it's not what you would expect. 'Allein' is a downbeat piece with oriental melodies and gently plucked strings over warm bass. It's not for the club, that is for sure, but the flip side version 'Allein In Italien' sure is. This one is a chugging and brit Italo disco number with retro 80s synth sounds and plenty of joyous grooves.

Review: Prins Emanuel is a Malmo-based artist with many strings to his bow, but here he returns to Music For Dreams for another exquisite excursion into the cosy folds of ill-defined kosmische-jazz-jam band music. It's a warm and many layered sound shaped out by instrumentation first and foremost, but driven by a motorik sensibility which carries each piece on its journey into mellow, mysterious terrain. It's not as explicitly worldly as most Fourth World music, but it shares that sense of relocation to unknown realms via tender means of travel. Immediate enough to draw you in from the first measure but subtle enough to keep you coming back to learn more, this is an undoubtedly brilliant record by a hidden treasure of Sweden's alternative music scene.