Bleep

Kwes’ debut album ‘ilp’ delivered on the promise of a tantalising run of EPs for the likes of Warp and Young Turks with ten tracks of immaculate soul-pop. From the restrained placement of choice elements on ‘Flower’, where a grainy delayed vocal and throbbing naïve synths recall an earthier James Blake, to the punchier ‘36’, the album is dominated by a subtle pleasure in both revelling in, and screwing with, conventional song formats.

Kwes’ raw and emotional vocals lend a warmth to the full length which gives it a tangible ‘live’ quality, especially on the heartbreaking ‘Broke’, where fuzzy shoegaze guitars make an unusual but affecting sparring partner. There is nonetheless a precision to the production which will appeal to fans of finely wrought electronic music, with bass squelches on ‘Rollerblades’ delivering real heft but with a charming sense of wear and tear, and ‘B_shf_l’ containing a rattling hip-hop shuffle despite its confessional vocal delivery. ‘ilp’ seems to be an intriguing document of where Warp stand after nearly a quarter a century of independently releasing music, with Kwes every bit the idiosyncratic musician in the vein of the label’s classic artists, but adopting a more playful and understated approach to the tropes of electronic and pop music.