It is Peekay Tayloh’s use of a sample from Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” which initially catches my attention with his Sofa O.D. record. Tayloh is the moniker for Pantelis Kakaroglou, a Greece-based electronic musician who brings a distinct Mediterranean flavor to his nu-jazz and cinematic record, Sofa O.D.. “Phoney Promises,” the Osbourne inflected piece, is a deftly rendered ambient landscape flavored with a touch of Amon Tobin style breaks and an equally spectral alto saxophone. Kakaroglou creates a ghostly cityscape, ancient brick buildings coated by fog, which retains some of the sickly mercury vapor glow from streetlamps running along the canals.
Sofa O.D. is a soundtrack to European cities as if Amon Tobin and Riz Maslen were tapped to provide music for this Continental travelogue. “No Tax” combines Tobin’s sense of furious breaks with Maslen’s fusion of industrial electronics and live instrumentation. These tracks are both cinematic and kaleidoscopic in their dense musical textures, unrolling like high-speed versions of Tourist Council propaganda films. “The Hole You Are Inn” blisters and explodes with breaks, catapulting the Mediterranean guitar into a splintered realm of speed and color. It’s like being shown a four-hour film of the sights in Barcelona in five minutes. “Rumbus Rooms To Let” hustles along like the subways in London, a blinking tube map that lights up in concert with a hypnotic 120BPM drum ‘n’ bass rhythm.
Kararoglou’s appeal with Sofa O.D. is how he tempers these influences into a mix that begs for visual overlay. The beats sit back in the mix and act as propulsion while the ambient washes and instrumental melodies construct shimmering urban phantoms. “Dawn FM” captures sunrise on an empty shingle of beach, looking out across the grey Atlantic. There is movement in the sky and the water, reflections from the cities on the continent behind you, but for a few minutes you are along with your thoughts. Sofa O.D. makes me miss Europe. As long as I’m not physically there, though, I’ll have this record to transport my brain across the ocean.
Sofa O.D. is OUT NOW on Poeta Negra.
