The ten-track compilation delivers an evocative set of tracks by Hydroplane, Equilet, bioMecanico, Ando Laj (Wandering Eye/Diskotopia), Captainmarmalade, Sweguno, Overre, Fluorescent Grey, Wake, and Ghroth, bringing together both newcomers and veterans of the ‘intelligent dance music’ movement that sprouted out of Warp Records in the early 1990s. Literal Oasis also features the debut of PREEMS, a collaboration initiated by Gorrio and Delgado in recent years that focuses on live/hardware-based performance and improvisation.
Heavy post-rockers Vago Sagrado set a peaceful atmosphere with “K is Kool,” the opening track of their third album, Vol. III, that is hard to resist. They’ll soon enough pump in contrast via the foreboding low end of “La Pieza Oscura,” but the feeling of purposeful drift in the guitar remains resonant, even as the drums and vocals take on a kind of punkish feel. The mix is one that the Chilean three-piece seem to delight in, reveling in tonal adventurousness in the quiet/loud tradeoff of “Fire (In Your Head)” and the New Wave shuffle of “Sundown” before “Centinela” kicks off side B with the kind of groove that Queens of the Stone Age fans have been missing for the last 15 years. Things get far out in “Listen & Obey,” but Vago Sagrado never completely lose their sense of direction, and that only makes the proceedings more engaging as the hypnotic “One More Time with Feeling” leads into the nine-minute closer “Mekong,” wherein the wash teased all along comes to fruition.
Helado Negro returns with This Is How You Smile, an album that freely flickers between clarity and obscurity, past and present geographies, bright and unhurried seasons. Miami-born, New York-based artist Roberto Carlos Lange embraces a personal and universal exploration of aura – seen, felt, emitted – on his sixth album and second for RVNG Intl.