Description
#naturalwonderbeautyconcept #vinyl #vinylrecords
Write an article about Tender mutuals, ambient starlet Ana Roxanne and dembow mutator DJ Python, double down on their acclaimed Times Square DJ set with a crystalline definition of trip-gaze subtractions like a whimsical fusion of Julee Cruise, Boards of Canada, Seefeel and Cucina Povera.
Spanning their blissed takes on sylvan illbient, early ‘00s electronics, shoegaze jungle and ambient-pop, proper, ‘Natural Wonder Beauty Concept’ lives up to its evocative mantle with some of the most distinctive work in either artist’s estimable catalogues. It blooms most handsomely from their 2021 experience of DJing together at Transmission, NYC, quilting that show’s threads of classic trip hop, weirdo dancehall, ambient chamber-pop and classical music into a luxurious original LP that showcases their individual strengths amplified in collaboration.
While we’ve heard Brian Piñeyro’s DJ Python slithering toward this style since ‘Mas Amable’, these jams with Ana Roxanne are no doubt the most substantial and finely realised from him in this mode, supplying soft-touch bedding to Roxanne’s etheric glossolalia in 10 diversely dream-weft confections. Roxanne’s ethereal Kranky full-length ‘Because of a Flower’ and its brilliant predecessor “~~~” gave us a taste of her vocal range, but where those albums treated her voice like oil paint, smudging it into her impressionistic electronics, here she’s coaxed completely into a well-lit graphic reality, flashing between the roles of pop starlet and heartsick dreamer.
Seducing to the horizontal with ‘Fallen Angel’, they gently comb frayed nerves with a careful course of downbeat medication in the drowsy hyper-pop of ‘Sword’ and their tripped lullaby duet ‘III’, but prang off on dream-pop/jungle angles with a lush title song centrepiece, before recalling the eeriest plasmic traces of Leila’s AFX-engineered trip hop slant on ‘Young Adult Fiction’, and side quests in Seefeel or Hysterical Love Prioect-esque ’90s shoegaze electronica on ‘Driving’, with ‘World Freehand Circle Drawing’ distinctly recalling the romantic adult contemporary staging of Susanna Wallumrød.
