Man Power - Souvenirs

  • Intergalactic house music.
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  • There's a lush, cosmic quality to Geoff Kirkwood's work as Man Power, at once transportive and highly danceable. He can do excellent, straight-up space disco (see "Put Your Hands On The Car (And Get Ready To Die)" on his recent Apologue EP), but the Mexico-based British producer is more likely to thread his tracks with unexpected details that make them more interesting than your average club cut. Take Souvenirs' lead track, "The Zen Of Xen, Parts I & II," a 13-minute odyssey that starts out languid and evolves into a futuristic stomper shot through with raygun synths. The Israeli vocalist Xen is loose and lazy to begin with, but her childlike coo and wide-eyed musings—"be like the sky, never fall"—turn magisterial in the more urgent second act. "Heart For Yes Like For No" is peak-time techno-disco, with glittering, arpeggiated synths and a restless bassline, while "Hubris" closes the EP in delightfully unconventional fashion. Calypso chords and skipping beats are bright and playful, then a wordless chant wafts in from above, inspiring a more internal kind of reverie. The vocal is completely incongruous but somehow just right, like the basil you never knew you needed in your margarita.
  • Tracklist
      A1 The Zen Of Xen, Parts I & II, feat. Xen B1 Heart For Yes Like For No B2 Hubris
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