Review: Nightmares on Wax – Feelin’ Good
Published on September 19th, 2013 | Jonny Abrams
Feelin’ Good is the first Nightmares on Wax album in five years, picking up more or less from the high-quality chill-out zone George Evelyn left us in with 2008’s Thought so….
Mind you, ‘chill-out’ has never quite felt right when applied to Nightmares on Wax; its connotations are all wrong. They don’t do justice to all the quirky yet meticulously crafted grooves and glitchy snatches of Evelyn’s electronic music background…it’s more late-night than chill-out, really.
It remains supreme among its kind, to boot. Feelin’ Good will leave you feeling as much with its laid-back stoner funk, sweet applications of organic orchestration, its warmth-dispensingly plonking bass lines and all-round sense of the luxurious, the exotic and the luxuriously exotic. Oh, and the exotically luxurious.
“Be, I Do” is utterly lush, a shuffling samba-jazz thing with a playful streak emphasised by the gleeful incongruousness of the old school hip hop vocal, while “Master Plan” is lit up by the exquisitely sultry ‘n’ smoky voice of Katie Gray.
Energy levels are kicked up by the bright, bouncing urgency of the aptly titled “Now is the Time”, before the gleaming classic soul of “Give Thx” exemplifies Evelyn’s knack for dressing up his approach in various styles.
“Eye (Can’t See)” is wickedly disorientating in the way it messes up its vocal samples, “There 4u” lays crystalline strokes of synthetic-sounding guitar over a stuttering, clacking rhythm section, and cheekily titled closer “Om Sweet H(Om)e” flaunts a breakdown section featuring a round of extended, throaty om-ing.
It’s an odd yet pleasing choice of crowning glory on an album that’s positively teeming with shows of class. Feelin’ Good is right.
Feelin’ Good is out now on Warp Records.
You can buy Feelin’ Good on iTunes and on Amazon.
Rocksucker says: Four Quails out of Five!
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