#3388 Pierre Cavalli - Uma Vitamina Faz Favor

3.5/5
A bossa-nova drifter via Europe, wobbling between classy jazz and vacant (if catchy!) library music. Funky, sunny, and uncanny strange, its own kind of actually very cool

#3027 Premiata Forneria Marconi - Storia Di Un Minuto

I knocked PFM as Genesis wannabes when I heard Photos of Ghosts, but their debut has its own magic. Still some galloping Nice-via-Knifeism, but its own raucous energy too, some real kneechopping synth beauty, and dozens of elegant surprises. This's a band possessed, pulled by unseen forces and pulling you along. Wildly strange and elegant and mysterious, complex without being showy. How prog outta be 4.5/5

#2883 Maiole - Music for Europe

Light, lush, listenable house, peppered with little buzzes and flecks of guitar -- listenable lemonade for a breezy spring day. The vocal snippets are loose and distant like memories, everything in its lane on its way somewhere sunflecked 4/5

#2848 Bottin - I Have What I Gave

Super cool. All nightdrive momentum with Italian disco ambiance, everything so minimal and crisp, thin black ties and slick suits under laser light. The perfect combination of maximalist lean-forward and icy lean-back, touches of rockist energy with a DJ's touch for organic pacing and perfectly placed samples 4.5/5

#2695 Daniele Luppi - Milano

Sounds more like a Parquet Courts album with guest vocals by Karen O, so light is Luppi's touch.

But so what? This would be a fucking incredible Parquet Court album, packed with unexpected chimes and horns and flourishes, slathered in the atmosphere of retro Italian decadence, plus Karen O! An uneasy, overdrunk joy soaks into every measure, a curious, compelling little collision 4/5

#2184 Baltimora - Living in the Background

Goofy, goodtime euro pop from those Tarzan Boy guys. The rest sounds more or less like you'd expect: very 80's guitars, very 80's synths, with just a touch of nightclub fantasia. Perfectly fine. Not my scene 3/5