- Melody-rich ambient from the Canadian artist.
- "He has an impeccable melodic sensibility... he can just sort of walk up to a keyboard and play a really good catchy melody, like, right away." That's what the Canadian DJ Dane said about Dylan Khotin-Foote in 2016, when the Vancouver producer's career was still in its infancy. Dane was talking about one of Khotin-Foote's house tracks. More recently, though, Khotin-Foote has drifted toward a downtempo sound, as heard on last year's New Tab. He returns to that sound on Beautiful You, an album that sharpens some ideas from New Tab while pleasantly blurring others.
On "Levi's Synth," Khotin-Foote doodles on a keyboard, dressing the track up with birdsong and plaintive chords. It's impressionistic and casually beautiful, each chord wash transfixing your ear. Pillowy organs appear and disappear on the stunning "Water Soaked In Forever," which moves with a pendulous yet organic rhythm. The track's natural feel gets to the bottom of why Khotin-Foote's ambient is so appealing: it's never complicated. The melodies are catchy, the atmospheres are transportive—and all it takes is a few strokes of a keyboard and some samples.
Beautiful You also benefits from a placid mood that makes it more relaxing than its predecessor. The songs run much longer, though they never overstay their welcome. "Looping Good" holds a woozy, kick-free groove in suspended animation. "Vacation" draws out the power of stillness, with a single sustained chord shimmering through the entire track. There are a few distractions—pinging notes, pitched-down vocals—but your focus is always drawn back to that one synth.
Voices float in and out of earshot on Beautiful You, contributing to a foggy, dreamlike atmosphere reflected in the cover, an ASCII-rendered photo of Khotin's family living in Italy as refugees in the '80s. The quote that kicks off the record—"Beautiful you, thanks for the smile"—was inspired by a note left eight years ago on Khotin-Foote's car windshield. He never figured out who put it there, but the phrase stuck with him long enough to resurface during the sessions for this album. Like any of the memorable moments on Beautiful You, that anonymous sentence is simple, haunting and hard to get out of your head.
Tracklist01. Welcome
02. Water Soaked In Forever
03. Levi's Synth
04. Alla's Scans
05. Vacation
06. Dwellberry
07. Looping Good
08. Merged Host
09. Somehow More Sad
10. Planet B