- On his debut release, the 24-year-old Copenhagen producer Samuel André Madsen proves that he's got range. The title track is a sultry, slow-burning filter disco number that doesn't try to hide its love for Roulé and the French touch; "Basement Jam" is a trim, brooding deep houser in the vein of recent Smallville or Kann tracks; and "KBH Beats (First Beat)" digs into a fluttery hip-hop groove comparable to Lukid, Kelpe or some of the West Coast "beat music" producers.
Madsen clearly also has chops. While the hip-hop scratching gives "KBH Beats" a slightly pastiche feel, the expansiveness of the music, with its alternately buzzing and balmy timbres, is enough to dispel the notion that you're listening to an imitation of an imitation. He ticks the right boxes, but perhaps not with the same ballpoints you're used to. "Basement Jam" is more conventional, with crisp 808s cutting against sullen chords. The muted spoken-word snippet could be used far more sparingly, but it's got all the right frequencies in all the right places.
As for the dreamy, pumping "Love Like This," it's both exuberant and carefully reined in, working a single flashing disco loop with hypnotic focus. If anything, it's linear to a fault. Cycling through its filters, peak to trough, peak to trough, it stays the course, never admitting the extraneous element that might create an additional sense of friction—the spark to set it all alight. Madsen clearly knows how to do a lot of stuff right; now he just needs to get a little bit more wrong.
TracklistA Love Like This
B1 Basement Phasement
B2 KBH NV (First Beat)