Salute: True Magic Album Overview

Automobiles and pop music: They’re fairly actually constructed to go collectively. Enter True Magic, the Ninja Tune debut from Manchester-based producer salute. Engines roar to life and cheers crescendo with every lap as producer Felix Nyajo shifts effortlessly throughout French contact, glitchy home, jungle beats, UK storage, and soul samples. Traversing genres with a pop sensibility alongside a heavy roster of collaborators, True Magic remembers Settle, the career-defining debut by Disclosure (who’re featured on “elevate off!”). salute and longtime buddy and govt producer Karma Child inject every monitor with LED-lit momentum and joyriding ease.

salute’s first full-length has been a decade within the making. In 2014, Nyajo relocated from Vienna to the UK, immersing themselves within the British membership scene at a second when the strong, metallic rhythms of future bass pioneers like Hudson Mohawke and Rustie dominated. That tectonic purple sound affect—chip-tune buildups pieced along with sludgy bass hooks—was audible in early salute releases. Since then, Nyajo has ironed out the aggressive drops, smoothing their fashion into what they’ve known as “quick and soulful home music.” They’ve carried out for Boiler Room crowds and labored alongside modern-day pop hitmakers (the 1975’s George Daniel) and fellow rising producers (DJ Boring, DJ Seinfeld, Barry Can’t Swim). 4 Tet is a fan.

True Magic demonstrates the extent of salute’s evolution. Its songs are sculpted round glowing ’80s synthesizers, nodding to fashionable nostalgists like Daft Punk, Alan Braxe, and Kavinsky. The smooth, Weeknd-esque “Possibly it’s u,” that includes vocals from Scottish producer Sam Gellaitry, has the propulsive punch of Discovery and a few of Ratatat’s cheese-grated guitar. Mixing gritty bloghouse with parts of UKG, drum’n’bass, and jungle, salute emulates the aura of previous hits with out ripping them off. The outcomes showcase their curatorial ability, becoming every monitor to their visitors’ strengths. Empress Of’s satin vocals are the right vessel for romantic longing on “a type of nights”; piri’s cherubic tone in “luv caught” is matched to bubblegum home on cruise management.

Nyajo locates True Magic’s inspirations in classic Japanese automobile ads, a colourful, frictionless fashion of clip that matched shiny new vehicles to sentimental pop soundtracks and fuzzy graphics. A pattern of the Japanese jazz fusion group Casiopea’s tune “Asayake” on the intro nods to an identical time interval, however salute doesn’t linger: They swiftly transition to the rubbery bass of “saving flowers,” with Rina Sawayama. It’s as satisfying as operating a sequence o f inexperienced lights. The entrance half of the album’s French home tilt is abruptly (and thrilling) interrupted by “go!,” that includes Japanese rapper Nakamura Minami, whose high-energy, hyper-animated fashion beforehand landed her work within the racing recreation Want for Pace.