From what I understand, Kiln use both live and programmed elements to build their distinctive sound. Their level of production is great; the beats are as familiar as your heart beat, synched tightly together and placed carefully all around the sound field. The melodies aren’t bold, in fact they act more as counter points to the percussive elements, but they do have a distinctly tropical feel to them. Actually the album as a whole really leaves an exotic/tropical feeling with me. Not tropical instrumentation per se (no ukeleles), but melodically tropical in the vein of various Plaid tracks on Not For Threes, or Thomas Fehlmann on Good Fridge Flowing. The style of modern exotic you would expect to hear from the house band as you stepped off the space shuttle at Tessier-Ashpoole’s Freeside resort. It is a pleasant sunny vibe, but one that runs dangerously close to being exotic-electronica-lite, Eddie Layton and his boys E’d up at the Copa Cabana in the year 2010.
There is enough going on production-wise to keep the island vibe mostly at bay. I mean it is released on Ghostly International, and a label of its caliber doesn’t release driftwood trash. So all totaled Sunbox delivers with a trunk of sunlit grooves, perfect for easing anyone out of the house on these gentle spring mornings.
Sunbox is out now on Ghostly International.
