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Bleep Mix #112 - K-LONE

  1. Bleep Mix #112 - K-LONE

    Bleep Mix #112 - K-LONE

K-LONE’s Cape Cira LP is one of the prettiest records you’ll hear all year in techno or any other genre. The Wisdom Teeth boss created a verdant sonic world on that album, one where rippling beats came drenched in sun-dappled atmospheres and melodies that evoked palm trees swaying in a breeze. On this exclusive mix, K-LONE lets us in on some of the music that inspired the record. The mix’s first half largely eschews dancefloor pulses in favour of dreamy flushes of sound - while there are some gently danceable numbers in here from the likes of DJ Python and Duckett, the entries around them emphasise new-age-inspired textures in a manner that draws a clear line to Cape Cira. We then enter a territory of coy techno and micro-house throbs, one where Jan Jelinek’s ‘Rock In The Video Age’ sets the tone, before blissing out with pure ambiences at the mix’s close.

"This mix is a selection of cuts from my favourite albums I was listening to around the time of writing Cape Cira, mostly the sort of stuff for listening to at home rather than the club. Featuring music from Leif, Steve Reich, Loidis, Duckett, Kelly Lee Owens, Pole, Jan Jenelik, Don't DJ & Visible Cloaks."

  • Artist
    K-LONE
    ReleaseProduct
    Cape Cira
    Label
    Wisdom Teeth
    Catalogue Number
    WSDMLP001
    Release Date
    24 April 2020

    The playful, breezy and gently hypnotic debut LP from K-LONE was a perfect oasis of calm to escape to when things got a little too heavy. No surprise we found ourselves making countless trips throughout 2020.

    In a year where the simple act of staring out a window or ambling amongst some trees could lift the mood, any album which whisked us away to a private tropical island was a necessary balm. “Cape Cira” did exactly that. Josiah Gladwell’s first full-length might have plausibly gone the other way: as one-half of Wisdom Teeth alongside Facta, he’s made and released some of the better British club music of recent years – zipping naturally through UKG, 4x4, breaksy techno and echoes of dubstep past.

    “Cape Cira” strikes a different path. Though there’s a faint undercurrent of house music running through it, the album is a kindred spirit to the fourth-world imaginings and balmy environmental music sculpted over time by the likes of Robert Rich, Midori Takada, Jon Hassell and Finis Africae, or more recently Sugai Ken, Visible Cloaks, Mark Barrott and Don’t DJ. You can even pick up tasting notes of Steve Reich. That is to say, the album is zen in the extreme.

    Tucked away at the end of K-LONE’s 2019 EP “Sine Language” was, well, a sign. The fourth and final track, ‘Bells’, rings clear as what Gladwell would come to interrogate on “Cape Cira”: a way to hold the synthetic and organic in twine. “Cape Cira” does the same, beginning with submerged kicks before slowly unmooring itself from the dock of dance music and drifting out onto the open blue.

    At points the album can be funky, most notably on the brain-bendingly catchy “Honey”. At others, the vibe is tranquil and emotionally tender: see the stunning 1-2 centrepiece of ‘Cape Cira’ and ‘Bluefin’, the moment at which you might find your shoulders loosening and all the tension in your head evaporating, like mist over a mountaintop. Birdsong, crickets, rain hitting tin and all manner of atmospheric noise prick the ears; by this stage, we usually find ourselves hoping the album has longer to run, but at just 48 minutes it keeps excess at bay.

    The eight songs on “Cape Cira” fit the aching dislocation of 2020 like a glove, which presumably isn’t what Gladwell had in mind during its composition (though, made in the depths of grey winter, it was intended to provide light and warmth). Right now, the album feels like a gift to human resolve as much as a paean to the natural world – bestowing a rare gravitas for a debut record and imbuing it with staying power that will last long after life under lockdown has thawed.

    Digital Tracklist

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