30 years later we have a fresh flashback courtesy of Oriol Singhji, the latest signing to Mark Paradinas' (mu-Ziq) Planet Mu label.
Like a buried memory, this guy seems to pop out of nowhere but you are ultimately happy that your mind seemed to magically conjure him in the first place. Like the time when you visit various music shops in the mall and play around with various Casios and other synthesizers on display, discovering various settings and pretending you're Stevie Wonder.
... Or maybe it's just me. Ahem, moving on.
Oriol's debut offering "Night and Day" is a joyful listen from start to finish, a masterful blend of nostalgia and futurism with grooves that you can't help but get lost in. It's lush, vibrant, imaginative yet each track doesn't over-stay its welcome or keeps adding weight to the production so that it will eventually collapse unto itself. As soon as you hear the first bars of the album's opener "Joy FM", you are immediately transported to the early days of Video Soul and Late Night VH1 (when they started playing more "soulful" music more prominently). Those flighty synthesized flutes take you back in the days of jungle backyards, Greecian pools and African bamboo thrones before pushing you along a laidback dancefloor groove complete with an infectious bassline. And before you know it, you are in a bar/lounge atop of a skyscraper courtesy of "Spiral", a nice throwback to 80's nightlife.
Things get a bit icey in "Memories" but not enough to force you to leave your comfort zone, a synth-heavy jam to play under a starry sky. Speaking of "Jam", you know that keytar legend analogy I mentioned earlier... well this track is an indication that you should start kneeling, this cut is pure nostalgia! "The Process" is tribal hip-hop mashed with lovely synths and "Flux" is a perfect example of if Paul Hardcastle stuck with electro instead of migrating to smooth jazz. Then things slows down a bit in "Coconut Coast" while still remaining lush and vibrant.
The title track seems to transport you to an oriental shrine in space before dropping to a 4/4 beat, complete with distorted vox effects for a truly ethereal feel until it drops you into a short R&B odyssey in "Fantasy For N" and taking you back into the city with the very Paul Hardcastle-influenced "LW". And after that nice drive, the album closes with a tropical fantasy made sonic via "5 Bars".
Listening to this record from start to finish brought back so many found memories that I couldn't keep track. From raiding my aunts' and grandmother's vinyl collections, recieving my first 45" player on my 8th birthday, sneaking into my brother's room to play with his synthesizer (horribly), late night channel surfing, keytar performances on shows like Soul Train. The synthesizer itself maybe considered a gimmick for a time, but put into the right hands, it can prove to be an outstanding and wonderful instrument, as this 2010 album proves.
Now if you excuse me, I need to raid a few pawn shops...
