It Took A While But Eventually

んoon “Lumen”

“Lumen” is essentially an R&B song, but んoon’s arrangement is so peculiar in its rhythms and contrasts of textures that it comes out sounding sorta alien. It’s like Aaliyah/Timbaland music reinterpreted as post-rock – two concurrent off-kilter turn-of-the-millennium aesthetics merged into something both sleek and slightly awkward, but entirely mesmerizing. The band convey absolute confidence on this track, with every unusual choice played with an elegance that smooths out the tentative feeling of the beat.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Letherette “Hornty”

Letherette’s music is like a much hornier version of J. Dilla, like it’s all deliberately constructed as sex music. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say it’s all a tribute to the sensuous, luxuriant sex music of the 70s – everything they do is so rooted in those aesthetics that it’s hard not to approach this music as something that’s so earnestly enamored with its source material that it moves beyond the point of kitsch. “Hornty” is a particularly smooth track that holds up better as a discrete composition than most of Brown Lounge Vol. 5, which is clearly intended to be experienced as a suite. It’s a real “does-what-it-says-on-the-tin” sort of song: It’s obviously a horny reconfigured jazz song featuring horns. Would you want it to be anything else?

Buy it from Bandcamp.