Ultraviolet light teases the shadowy songs on ENTITY, the debut album by Belgian band Oscar & The Wolf. Like a delicate push and pull.
Like sunlight to vampires.
Singer-songwriter Max Colombie taught himself how to be a full-blooded producer (with a little help from a certain mister Leo Abrahams, who has produced for Brian Eno, Jon Hopkins and Wild Beasts) .
In this vibrant collection of songs he offers his heart on a silver plate for dissection. It’s the sound of melancholy wrapped in a haze of electronica.
Laptop beats pulsating to the rhythm of pure passion.
ENTITY is all about electronic soul music. Blink once and you’ll think it’s unabashedly fun and danceable, look again and you’ll witness its wistfulness elegantly circling around the grooves.
These songs speak of an intangible desire. It’s next level stuff, far removed from the introspective folk pop Oscar & The Wolf were once known for.
This is where the cosmically enhanced futurism comes in. Electronic pop full of gloom and childlike surprise.
These songs investigate our everyday fears. “A caged bird will only sing when it has accepted its destiny”, Colombie muses, shifting from anxiety to acquiescence.
Listen to him croon in ‘Princes’, with that trademark r&b-slurr, seductive and Sade-like.
Don’t miss out on the ballet of synth textures and that downtempo groove gone awry.
‘Joaquim’ and ‘Undress’ are sciencefiction ballads, uncut and untainted. Picture a gala night on the Starship Enterprise with Chet Baker, nonchalantly crooning on his bar stool. Yes, it’s that mind-altering.
‘Strange entity’ and ‘Somebody wants you’ lurk in the darkest corner of the club: technopop turned inside out. So let’s dance away the heartache.
Ask Colombie for the inspiration behind ENTITY and he’ll tell you about Polanski’s Bitter Moon, he’ll praise Luc Bessons The Fifth Element and the hallucinogenic magic realism of Donnie Darko. First and foremost, he’ll convince you True Blood’s utterly brilliant: gothic vampires succumbing to deceptively simple things like love and lust. Or he’ll tell you he was once taken off guard by a Francis Bacon painting.
Colombie’s love of film and art’s firmly present on ENTITY. Darkly romantic and melodramatic, it’s a twisted dream world for 21st century boys and girls.
Watch closely as they get lost in the pale neon light while following their own shadows, searching for each other and for themselves. A mirror ball fell from the ceiling, it lies shattered on the floor. Feels like dozing off in a bed of crumbling roses.
To boldly go where no band has gone before.
From now on it’s all about the future.
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