This album is a prime example of how technology is radically changing the way modern music is produced and consumed. Apart from the lead vocals and guitar, the sounds were all created or recorded directly onto an iPhone.
Alap Momin, from New York, created the beats, bass and majority of synth lines while Jan Johansen added backing vocals, second guitar, vibraphone, piano, horns, rhodes, and melodica using voice memos.
Both artists come to this project with a weight of experience albeit in more conventional recordings.
Momin is also known as the Oktopus and was a founding member and producer of the noise/hip-hop group dälek. Johansen, from Copenhagen, was in a band called Glorybox and currently performs in the Danish indie rock band Ring Them Bells.
The two combine forces here to create machine music with a soul and, above all, with a strong sense of rhythm. Bass heavy beats combine with dreamy textures to evoke elements of dub reggae, funk, space rock and hazy ambience.
Some very trippy vocals provide the human element yet also manage to give the tracks a distinctly spooky quality. On Won't Let It Happen we hear distorted strains of 'I wanna be your man' as if some straight R'n'B is struggling to emerge from the dense, dystopic atmosphere.
Flamingo is like a woozy soundtrack to a Sci-Fi movie. Higher Than The Sun is Can reimagined by Suicide.
The most effective, in terms of expertly combining intensity with danceability, are the opening tune Sunshine For Sadie, the shape shifting Seven Slayers and the elegant title track.
The publicity for the next generation iphones would do well to include some excerpts from this album though I doubt ordinary mortals could top the effects created by these two guys.
