CD Feature/ Nuspirit Helsinki: "Our Favorite Things"
TobiasIf ever there was one, this is the little chill album that could. In the case of this Nordic production duo, the term “genre-bending” isn’t a euphemistic way of saying “you figure it out” but the real deal; although the pair specializes in laptop-jazz, the songs they’ve chosen for this compilation mostly lean toward pop, house, and trip-hop, all with a sweet jazz undercurrent.
If you’re thinking Zero 7 you’re in the right ballpark, but this is mellower, less concerned with what radio might think; a kinder gentler Air perhaps; headphone-techno that’s by turns playfully unobtrusive (Aisha Duo’s “Beneath an evening Sky”), tentatively dissonant (Joakim’s “Peter Pan Over the Bronx”), even inventively danceable (the duo’s own sweet dub of Korpi Ensemble’s 60s-sounding torcher “A Moment of Love”).
Tales in Tones Trio experiments with the notion of a more mathematically inclined Dave Brubeck in “Sabari,” and even the collection’s debatable low point, Five Corners Quintet’s trip-electro “Before We Say Goodbye,” is more in tune with Massive Attack than their last hundred wannabes.
By Eric Saeger
Homepage: Nuspirit Helsinki
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