Woolfy vs. Projections:
The Astral Projections of Starlight
Dec 18th, 2008
5:18 pm
Permanent Vacation seem to release something outstanding every month – it’s not hyperbole to say that they have genuinely released some of the best records of 2008. Every single one of their releases manages to be both cheesy and cerebral, and records that are genuinely memorable. In the year in which many quarters are calling the death of minimal, it is perhaps surprising that a German label, a country more associated for its minimal labels than disco, italo or balearic, has given us some of the best records of those genres this year. But Permanent Vaction never feels just like it’s a disco label – the artists which make it up are obviously indebted to other forms, be those minimal, house, and just plain pop music. Permanent Vacation’s meteroic rise and output in 2008 has left German heavyweight Kompakt’s recent disco and pop influenced Total 9 compilation looking rather lacklustre in comparison.
Permanent Vacation’s latest full length from Woolfy and Projections further cements their reputation. Woolfy will be known to some for his recent output on Rong, but unlike singles such as “Oh Missy” which go for all out disco rock, his collaboration with Projections is a much more laid back affair, but not one without weight. Indeed, this album seems to be weighed down by slow, rich bass and hazy vocals. “Absynth”, one of the album’s undoubted highlights, is a codeine soaked slow jam in which each percussive element echoes with drugged out melancholy which Woolfy’s vocals evoke.
The album has lighter moments; “We Were There” is unashamedly balearic in its character, replete with it acoustic guitars, violins and trumpets, but despite its tropical rhythms and comparitively high tempo, this is not music to dance to; it’s aching strings never allow us that release needed to really let go. Even the most danceable cut on the album, “The Return Of Starlight”, seems designed to sedate the listener. But this sedation is never anything than completely engrossing. In much the same way that Italians Do It Better’s Invisible Conga People and Nite Jewel releases have managed this year, Woolfy and Projections’ album is created from disco’s form but has a character all of its own.
Invisible Conga People have also been chosen to rework “The Return Of Starlight”, which can be listened to at xxjfg – go do so, it really is something special.
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MP3 :> Woolfy vs Projections – The Return Of Starlight
Buy the CD from Juno here.
