- The adventurous producer paints bold strokes of folk and indie rock alongside his usual lurid electronics for an intriguing new LP on a new label.
- Together, Sega Bodega's last few albums could make up an angsty boy band. The Paris-based producer and songwriter's debut album, Salvador introduced him as more than just an adventurous club producer behind the scenes of some of the most exciting avant-pop in 2020. (It was titled after his given name, Salvador Navarrete.) The year after that, he rolled out a romantic album called Romeo. The story behind his latest album, Dennis, is a bit more disjointed. Navarrete wrote the album in the aftermath of experiencing reality-distorting mania. The music attempts to capture the confusion he experienced during this time, as if stuck in the disconcerting state between dreaming and waking up. The album's plain title is mostly unrelated—it just happens to read as "sinned" backwards, a name that stuck since Navarrete writes so frequently about heaven and hell.
Beyond his solo work, Navarrete is best known for his chrome-plated production work with fellow NUXXE founder Shygirl. A quick scan of Navarrete's productions credits reveal the true breadth of his work, from the mainstream to the niche. He worked on Björk and ROSALÍA's elegantly reggaeton-inflected "Oral," but also has Kiss Facility, an Arabic shoegaze project with Mayah Alkhateri. Laden with woozy guitar, crestfallen pads and smoky vocals that fade into the background, Kiss Facility might be the most helpful primer for the instrumentals on Dennis, released on his new imprint ambient tweets instead of the usual NUXXE—and stepping away from his usual sound with 11 tracks that sit at the outskirts of cinematic folk, indie rock and hyperpop.
Navarrete makes brilliantly dark and boldly synthetic pop—his voice, often pitched up and distorted into a monotone groan, is a result of his dislike of his own voice. On Dennis, his plasticky synthlines and glitchy vocals find a new home alongside powerful, pastoral acoustics. Together, these sounds lend Dennis a surprisingly dreamy and ancient mystique—like "Deer Teeth," a song written about a 7,000 year-old burial in which a mother, having died in childbirth, was buried alongside her child. The chorus is filled with primordial harmonies, split between a deep, sedated growl and weightless sigh, a pairing that offers the illusion of slowing down time. Navarrete's voice twists into something more synthetic as he sings an elegy over a bleepy synthline: "Bury me and keep me down with all your deer teeth / Until we meet / Feel the wings as we're cradled on a mother swan / Until we're gone."
A new guitar-forward approach unveils itself on quieter tracks like "Set Me Free, I'm An Animal," where Navarrete tries on a weightless soprano reminiscent of the folkier end of Eartheater's music. By the song's close, strings wail silently and wolves howl in the distance, like a sombre scene in a viking war film. There are still flashes the club-leaning avant-pop that has been his bread and butter for decades. The skittish arrangement of "Kepko," one of Dennis's lead singles, makes chipmunk vocals play hide-and-seek with blinding synths. Although Navarrete sounds like he's breathing in helium throughout, he comes off more sexy than cartoonish as he repeats, "Who's a bad girl?"
Still, the guest vocalists round out the album's satisfying balance of antiquated and futuristic. On "True," Lafawndah's heavenward soprano is clear and resonant, a toothsome opposite to Navarrete's scratchy voice, crusted with distortion. He also employs Alkhateri for vocals on four of the album's songs: "Deer Teeth," "Elk Skin," "Humiliation Doesn't Leave A Mark" and "Dirt." Her sinuous vocals mostly provide barely-there backing support, but on songs like "Humiliation Doesn't Leave A Mark," her voice finally transforms into something tangible out of the dark, billowing mist.
Of course, there's the question of Dennis's theme—does it actually sound like the state between being awake and asleep? To answer this, one need look no farther than "Adulter8," where he imagines what it would be like to be liquified in a belnder, a concept he admits is a bit "stupid." But the result is a ghostly, autotuned voice that sings in a raspy whisper, "dilute, adulterate, diminish, reduce me to nothing," until the words are sucked into a groaning vortex of technicolour synths. It's a silly concept—but it glitters with life, matching the fantastical state of descending back to earth after losing grip.
Tracklist01. Coma Dennis
02. Adulter8
03. Elk Skin
04. Kepko
05. Dirt
06. Set Me Free, I'm An Animal
07. Deer Teeth
08. True
09. Tears & Sighs
10. Humiliation Doesn't Leave A Mark
11. Coma Salv