Alix Perez - Chroma Chords

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  • Alix Depauw's first album, 1984, was a landmark when it dropped in 2009. Aglow with emotion, it was a statement of solidarity with drum & bass's Autonomic renaissance. His second, four years later, is a milestone yet again, marking him as a musical polymath standing out even amongst his Shogun Audio peers. It's no surprise that he's better at it than the lot of them: he's always had a gift for traditional musicality, which you can hear in his more funk-influenced project ARP 101. That alter-ego and Alix Perez had once seemed mutually exclusive—one warm and soulful, the other strictly mechanical. But on Chroma Chords, his love for hip-hop and soul bleeds into the picture for a brilliantly prismatic record. Take the first single, "Annie's Song." Like most Shogun Audio singles, it's a vocal tune, but Depauw isn't just strapping a singer to a drum & bass beat. From its broken glass arpeggios to orchestral pomp (and especially Sam Wills' Jodeci-esque vocal) it's a killer R&B song. And, like most of the album, it sits at a halftime drum & bass tempo without letting you realize it—there's an unusual amount of breathing room for 85 BPM. Chroma Chords is full of this ingenious engineering, welding genres and sounds together with a gorgeous sheen that's glossy but never distracting. From the glitch-hop of "Crystals" to the liquid drum & bass of "Playing Games," every sound seems to sparkle. There are definite forebears to Chroma Chords' style of sound design—the monolithic stomp of Eskmo and the subaquatic rave pressure of EPROM feel especially relevant—but his maturing ear for pop glues it all together. "Broken Heart," featuring PMR's Two Inch Punch, centers around a vocal sample that's the heart of Burial's "Distant Lights." Depauw's treatment of it—regal and almost angelic—is enough to make it sound new. The hit-you-over-the-head stuff works well, too: the trap elements on "Move Aside" pan widescreen, and "Villains 1 Heroes 0" is the rare drum & bass rap track that sounds truly menacing. Not every moment is perfect: the ornate "We Could Have Been" feels like Calibre-lite, and "YDK" pivots awkwardly on an off-key Weeknd sample. As a whole, however, Chroma Chords is a pleasure. It's sequenced like a pop album, with Depauw trying out everything he can. Like a drum & bass Odessey And Oracle, it shows major growth and ballsy courage all at once.
  • Tracklist
      01. Crystals 02. Broken Heart feat. Two Inch Punch 03. Playing Games feat. D.Ablo 04. Annie's Song feat. Sam Wills 05. Chroma Chords 06. Move Aside feat. Foreign Beggars 07. Warlord feat. Riko Dan 08. YDK 09. We Could Have Been feat. D.Ablo 10. Villains 1 x Heroes 0 feat. They Call Me Raptor 11. The End Of Us feat. Sam Wills 12. Monolith feat. Foreign Beggars & Jehst
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