- Niagara's music often seems to present familiar styles smudged and estranged by the Iberian sun. Parts of the Lisbon trio's 2015 EP, Ascender, did it with deep house, while "Asa," from last year's São João Baptista EP, did it with wig-out jazz fusion. The recent 37 was their Detroit and/or Chicago record, passing Motown's techno-optimism and Jamal Moss's house psychedelia through a heat-warped lense. On "Ida," from the third record on the trio's own Ascender label, dub is the dominant flavour. This is largely down to the mournful pentatonic lead line, which does a decent imitation of Augustus Pablo's melodica. But it's also in the backing track, which has dub's space and loping gait—albeit, as ever, made strange and unsettling.
On the B-side, "Volta" is more mutant New York disco, its drum machine bump a vessel for jaunty harmonica and an obnoxiously twangy guitar riff. The two are out of tune with one another, which, alongside spooky voice interjections, helps make a maddeningly cheery idea sound dark and twisted. The mood is recapped on the closer, "Calor 2," where a more subdued harmonica picks its way between bursts of down-pitched laughing, percussion rattles and the sounds of poured water and wind.
TracklistA1 Ida
B1 Volta
B2 Calor