Passarani & Sacco - Flora

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  • I'm not sure I would have expected to find the deeply rooted analogue adept Marco Passarani on Desolat, a label I associate, however unfairly, with the deracinated culture of the Ibiza circuit. Of course, alongside hits like Dubfire's "Ribcage" and Davide Squillace's "Cubism," the label has also devoted plenty of space to less obvious fare, like Moritz von Oswald's "Watamu Beach" rework or Pulshar's recent Inside LP, designed for home listening. (So, sure, joke's on me.) "Flora," a collaboration with Venezuela's Sacco (Matias Monteagudo) hovers tentatively on the edge of the dance floor, with a flicker of looped voice and aquamarine chords setting the scene before restrained drum machine and sampled congas take the lead. The blur of tightly cropped samples brings to mind The Field's endless, horizontal trajectory, while the clean basslines and jazzy drift faintly recall Move D & Benjamin Brunn. The long, slow swell of it all is incredibly graceful; it's hard to imagine a more perfectly paced warm-up track. Livioi & Roby's "Ce Face? Remix" digs into the kind of tribal percussion that's more customary for the label, but, all those insistent shakers and claves aside, it's hardly in your face: feathered delays and massing chords threaten to swallow the groove whole, and slow, panning vocal loops take the mood deep and weird. (The whole thing is covered a kind of lattice of birdcalls, a web of high-end chatter that stretches from end to end; it lends the curious sensation of being trapped in some kind of bubble, like a biodome clamped down over the dance floor.) It bulks up as it builds, with ungainly synthesizers oozing between the cracks; there's something very Luciano about it, but Livio and Roby have a darker, fuzzier vision than Cadenza has been prone to lately. Ricardo Villalobos and Thomas Melchior turn away from the original's laid-back vibe, pushing the tempo to +8 and lighting into crisp, tightly swung 808 sequences. But they keep the mossy bed of loops, which helps hydrate the dry, machinic palette, while plunging basslines and strangely bent chords keep everything tied up in knots. Its nearly 16 minutes are warranted; the maze just keeps drawing you invitingly forward.
  • Tracklist
      A1 Flora (Original) A2 Flora (Livio & Roby Ce Face? Remix) B1 Flora (Villalobos & Melchior Fauna Remix)
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