- London-based Frenchman Xavier Thomas' earlier work showed a restless and adventurous protagonist, creating everything from unstable, melting synth-funk to choppy hip-hop jams. As time has passed, his sound has been solidifying into something with more power behind its rhythmic muscle, focused and full-bodied. He completes that transformation with his first album for Civil Music, From the Horizon, a collection where his eclectic mix of exotic funk and wriggly synth lines finally congeals into a congruent mass, easily his most satisfying and accomplished work yet.
From the Horizon exudes a certain confidence from its very first track: "Ori" strikes with surety and swagger, wide-set guitar riffs and gravelly screams lashing out like some determined rock band. It's all stitched together so well you can only really tell it's sampled music from its exaggerated, jerky motions. The album flits through Debruit's usual number of genre touchstones, a scribbled funk that occasionally resembles hip-hop but more often than not just assumes whatever shapes it can make from the odd edges leftover from Thomas' artisan craft.
Vocals are a bigger part of his music than ever before, sometimes distracting ("Ata"), and other times the focal point, as on album highlight "Afro Booty Musique" where guitars duel underneath a vocodered chorus that brings to mind the unbridled joy of highlife and African acts like Amadou & Mariam. In fact, so much of Horizon dips its fingers into the essence of highlife it could almost be considered exploitative, although what Thomas appropriates is more the music's infectious effervescence than its actual sounds. From the Horizon is a record that hones in almost exclusively on "fun"—it just so happens that if you dig deeper you'll be rewarded with a rich world of digital tapestry.
Tracklist 01. Cri
02. Ata
03. Cuivree
04. Afro Booty Musique
05. Ogene Udu
06. Frere
07. Zef
08. Mega Wagna
09. Ouest Wind's Seagulls
10. Akoula
11. Reve Du Niger
12. Marabout
13. The Day I Lost My Funk