- Chalk it up to a case of wonky mathematics. A genuinely exciting young talent + a capacity for anthems and intricately realized slow burners + the opportunity to stretch out in long form ought not add up to a case of curious inconsistency. Somewhere within this formula, though, it seems that San Soda has neglected to carry the one.
Nicolas Geysens knows a thing or two about consistency. Case in point: Immers & Daarentegen's new productions, which function here like an album-within-an-album. With them, he presents several perspectives of a single sound signature, where each track takes its individual shape while swathed in a cotton-candy gauze of airy analog pads. "Juno Love" glides through mid-tempo, middle ear ambience, punctuated by adenoidal melodies. The sugary gusts of "Something about Compression" are grounded by a sticky-footed hip-hop kick.
"Shouts in Peace" should make Rick Wade weep for joy (or envy), coolly co-opting his formula of gritty deep house with heady major-key chords. "Cocomo" is the rough diamond, its proto house beat and off-time claps signaling a basic arrangement, but then as layer after layer of counter-rhythms and unrelated melodic stories are introduced to each other, they interlock in the blink of an eye for a trancey crescendo of brittle synths, before swiftly retreating to their own corners.
Interestingly, these tracks stand alone as the lissome and limited vinyl version of Immers & Daarentegen, but one assumes that in the attempt to really make an album out of it, the coherence has been sacrificed in other formats, prised apart and padded out with several 12-inch cuts. The presence of the sprawling, spiraling, slow-house ebb and flow of "Doorsnee" is a welcome one, but this year's gospel-house breakout "Let's Go" just serves to show up the house-by-numbers of "Hypocrisy" and "Evaluation of the Evidence."
One can also only assume that either in the attempt to account for all shades of the San Soda palate, or to create a connective thread, that a handful of interludes have been shoehorned onto the mix. The first, "Milieutechnologie 1" is deep and textured jazzy hip-hop, but each of the ones that follow progress in reverse, with cruder sound sketches of what came before, and, by the time that "NLST" and the canned electro of "Timbapunk" roll around, it's peering into the darkest recesses of an anonymous sound library.
San Soda is neither lacking for talent or ideas, but in forfeiting a few critical edits in the effort to showcase his entire sonic range, floodlights are unintentionally positioned over some of the album's flaws. Thank goodness then for vinyl—or, at least, for the selective pruning capabilities of iTunes—which will allow this collection to be pared back to its raw essentials.
Tracklist 01. Juno Love
02. Interlude: Milieutechnologie 1
03. Quilombo
04. Evaluation Of The Evidence (Short Version)
05. Interlude: Kousevoetjes
06. Hypocrisy
07. Something About Compression
08. Let's Go
09. Interlude: Milieutechnologie 4
10. Doorsnee
11. Cocomo
12. Interlude: NLST
13. Shouts In Peace
14. Kylie Bling
15. NMBSucks
16. Timbapunk