Marquis Malanga — Velvet Ghetto

After a series of single song releases that pin-balled through the music blogosphere, the Swiss Future Pop outfit is back with Velvet Ghetto, a concept EP of seriously glitchy soulfulness with a heavy existentialist leaning. Although every song on here sounds like it could hijack the airwaves  – because it could!  – this is music that was written for grown up music connoisseurs who like to be challenged by layered, unconventional songwriting. This is music composed and played by skilled Jazz musicians, and polished up to a Tee by expert sound designers, who fancy the edgier end of the spectrum. There's a nonchalant playfulness at work throughout, an ease with which new rhythm and song structures are thoroughly explored and reinvented. The lyrics are full of accurately curated vivid, cinematic imagery glazed over with a mild ironic charge. If Kafka were alive today and was commissioned to pen a screenplay for Wong Kar Wai, this could easily be the soundtrack.

The EP was mostly written and recorded in Berlin, although a fair deal of file exchanges took place along the way. The sound is still chock full of analog instruments: real drums, the Korg MS20, Juno-60, the SH09, a guitar, a bass, a guzheng, a zither, as well as the sound of a door, some broken glass, and other field recording oddities captured during the recording sessions. Kamikaze is currently stripped down to a duo: Fabio Pinto (voice, guitar, bass, keys) and Alexandre Maurer (drums, percussion, keys).