Supreme Cuts - Divine Ecstasy

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  • Divine Ecstasy opens (and later closes) with a spoken word monologue that melts away into smooth jazz pounded by jungle breaks. That's Supreme Cuts in a nutshell. The quirky Chicago duo of Mike Perry and Austin Kjeultes have always had rap and R&B at the core of their sound, but myriad other influences bubble to the surface on their second LP. Instead of the instrumental hip-hop of days past, Divine Ecstasy is a cosmopolitan pop record that sustains all the gravity and mystique of their earlier work. It's the vocal samples that cement Supreme Cuts' shift toward the middle ground, and Divine Ecstasy is full of them. The duo fare remarkably well here, finding strong voices to go with their own confident productions. Mahaut Mondino has the star turn with "Gone," her multi-octave vocals matching the duo's pumping trance grandeur. The same goes for Poliça singer Channy Leaneagh, whose warbly autotune wraps tight around their anxious beats, keeping the more excessive aspects from rocketing off into the stratosphere. Supreme Cuts thrive on these musical extremes. The title track is like mongrel happy hardcore, as chipmunk synths twirl above a footwork beat. But even amidst all this chaos they keep their textures eminently groomed, with everything in just the right place. When they aren't bashing you over the head, it's the vivid pluck of a string instrument that'll get you, or the bleat of a horn. The album is often quite delicate; the noodling brass beneath the slow rap of "ISIS" creates a sense of depth you'll only notice if you let yourself drift in. These touches show how rapidly Supreme Cuts are maturing as they wade through the most prolific phase of their career (a mixtape with Haleek Maul and production for Mykki Blanco are some of their achievements in the year since Whispers). They make some mistakes, sure—the vocal spots from JODY and Yen Tech are fumbles—but they're more adept than ever at stewing their idiosyncratic set of sounds into one deliciously strange brew. Supreme Cuts once called their sound "R&B with a winky face," but whatever ironic distance they might have had from that genre has vanished by now.
  • Tracklist
      01. Prologue (Agony/Ecstasy) 02. Cocktails feat. Shy Girls 03. Gone feat. Mahaut Mondino 04. Dionysus Rising 05. Envision feat. Channy from Poliça 06. Divine Ecstasy 07. Peak Experience 08. Down feat. The GTW, Khallee & David Ashley 09. Brown Flowers 10. ISIS feat. Haleek Maul & Bago 11. Bacchus 12. Faded feat. Py 13. It's Like That feat. Yen Tech 14. Epilogue (Streetwalker)
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