Thursday 25 July 2019

CFCF - Liquid Colours


CFCF revels in the gulf between our present reality and the not-so-distant past. Refusing to be confined to one genre, he jumps around gleefully between once-trendy styles, and in so doing forces us to reconsider their artistic value and present-day relevance. From his minimalist (I mean really Glass/Reich-esque) 2013 release Music for Objects, to his 2010 Slow R&B for Zellers Locations Canada Wide (which sound post-modern and gimmicky enough to be in a David Foster Wallace footnote), CFCF plays with our expectations of what makes music good at a particular time and place.

His latest album Liquid Colours is a natural sequel to his 2015 The Colours of Life. He describes The Colours of Life as being primarily inspired by the super-optimistic Phil Collin’s track “Hand in Hand”, as well as by some electronic Krautrock and Balearic influences. He says the motivation for Liquid Colours began with “a simple challenge to myself to see if I could follow through on a continuous suite in one style. Much like COL, it was a break in working on another more involved, complicated album. I was interested in ‘corporatized’ pop jungle – totally inauthentic to the genre’s roots.”

Even when he’s admittedly being tongue-in-cheek, the album is composed with enough care to make you wonder how serious it is - to make you wonder if something this enjoyable can be tongue-in-cheek. Although divided into tracks, it might as well be one long track, as each blends into the next.

As the hazy, groovy 80’s synths ebb and flow, as the generic d&b percussion picks up and slows down, you have the sensation of listening to music that is sort of from nowhere. If you called a service number and heard this playing, you would role your eyes, and then you would turn your speaker to full volume just to listen.

No comments:

Post a Comment