Love Kamikaze presents an incredibly continuous and flowing album that drums up much of, if not more, of the tender qualities that I have grown to expect from his music.
An incredibly continuous and flowing album
It’s been a wild three-year ride for Serge Geyzel and it feels like only yesterday I was reviewing his nothing-less-than-excellent release Xenophonic on Touched Music. Unbelievably a whole eight months has gone by and now with his outburst that is Love Kamikaze, I feel rather like a headmaster having to bring the same pupil to my office for some stern words.
But, unlike most of my educational experience, the words aren’t stern and scolding—rather continued praise for having set his standards high and stuck to them. Much like Serge’s previous gift, Love Kamikaze presents an incredibly continuous and flowing album that drums up much of, if not more, of the tender qualities that I have grown to expect from his music.
Terms I used before still apply: melancholy, liquid, stunning, confident—nothing is amiss and while one could say this is more of the same in places, that’s really no problem at all when the same is work of this quality.
A world of ever-evolving style ::
Serge has clearly found his love and skillset and by all means he should be allowed to express himself. Even the instrumentation isn’t a far cry from what I’m used to, and the sense of continuity it brings is welcome in a world of ever-evolving style and emulation.
It’s not all what we’re accustomed to however. The glides and stream of “Kaleidoscope” gives way to the very different “From Here,” distant and haunting evocative championed both by Portishead and the vocal skills of Nicolette—passionately performed here by Matilde (aka P(h)onyCat.) It’s no surprise that with this track we also get a bonus appearance from prior collaborator Karsten Pflum as if the rest of the pieces weren’t good enough already. “One Of These Days” further stretches the mould further still with its feeling of breaks and emphasis shift to start and ends of bars, bound to sway your shoulders as it does mine. Hands down, the favorite here is “Overthought,” you just can’t beat a minor key with these types of beats and the result is both reflective and engrossing.
The only gripe I have is that this time around things won’t be available on vinyl—some very agreeable moments here lend themselves to crowd-pleasing, but I guess we can’t have everything in life! It is however available digitally now with pre-orders being taken for a CD release in a couple of weeks so I am as satisfied as I can be.
Love Kamikaze is available on Pulse State. [Bandcamp]
