Pablo Nouvelle & Kinnship

Imagine a cheerier Burial, the post-dubstep turntablist miserablist. What, you can’t? I know, it’s difficult. What about a less buttoned-up James Blake, dontcha just want to scream ‘Thrill out, man, just for once?!’. I know I do.

But, allay those fears and banish those worries, Swiss DJ/Producer/film-maker and ‘collage-maker’ Pablo Nouvelle and multi-instrumentalist Kinnship are here and now with ‘Stones & Geysers’. The beat of street-life, the elemental echoes of the ether, the pulses of existence, the vibrations of natural sensations, all are contained within. In any (or no) particular order this album could be described (as is the wont of the commodity-categorising clarion call) of as nu-pop-gospel, pizzazz-jazz, electro-elegiaca, slo-mo po-mo pastoralism. All apposite, none pejorative.

Opener ‘Sentiment’ and ‘Light of Day’ marry Deptford Goth’s chamber-pop (whatever happened to him?) with Bon Iver’s dissonant-tunings, this is the welcome sound of the dawn chorus breaking into full flow, the light waking, the darkness dissipating, illuminations begetting ruminations. This is perfectly proselytised on the titular track where the lyrics ‘I tend to think about spiritual things in physical ways’ captures the link between the earthly and the divine, the physical trumping the virtual.

The benefits of patience, the ripe fruits of clock-watching, the rewards of sitting there doing ‘time’ are captured on ‘The wholesomeness of waiting’: a mantra to patience and pensiveness set to the warm-glow feel of a 5 .am comedown club, a dancedown dub evocative of a loose Prince-like jam that relaxes every muscle then pulls them taut, each spiritual sinew stretched and soothed.

Standout is ‘If not love’. Sparse beats entice and entrap the surrounding sounds, languid funk builds to a final 60 seconds is a superlative detour into inter-stellar space-rock and soul.