hey everyone. hope you are good. i went kind of long on the new cfcf. probably listen to the album first. web link in case of email mangling. if you like the 'sletter tell a friend : )

cfcf - l.u.v.

CFCFL.U.V.

the follow up to memoryland has arrived. not exactly the album i wanted from cfcf, but good and maybe even great. it's sharp and shiny, cynical, with a bitter vein of darkness flowing throughout. sorry i wrote a lot, you should listen to the album.

the production throughout is... well. cfcf is a master, and here he turns his skills to rendering a take on the kind of forgotten dance pop LP that litters the late 90s and early 00s (maybe most notably Les Rhythmes Digitales - Darkdancer, a fascinating misfire). the production is sharp, bright, sometimes hurts the teeth like a too sweet lemonade, or chewing tinfoil. his sense of orchestration is immaculate as it was on memoryland, the tracks swelling, breathing, undulating, dissolving. they move as a solid whole with guitars and synths morphing into sweeping fx, vocals drifting in and out of the dense arrangements. his take on the sounds of the 00s might hit harder if he wasn't late to the party, the basement jaxx inspired stylings already populating the supermarket airwaves thanks to charli and pinkpantheress among many others by now. he is a better producer, but not always a better songwriter, and the album is much more uneven than memoryland with a few forgettable duds across its 13 tracks. the mediocre tracks are long too, especially the head scratching 4:45 minutes of 'babes', a hollow pisstake i'm surprised made the cut. 

the albums first single, ultra-obscene, is a useful study. a pretty blatant riff on in flagranti's 'brash & vulgar' (‘09) right down to the title, the track enlists argentine duo EQ for a take on mid 00s electro pop. the half-hearted provocations of both the production and the lyrics fall flat, neither convincing. maybe that's the point. an early example of the 'sarcastic hedonism' promised by the album blurb, it announces the album's unsettling tone. the flatly delivered:

'i love reading dostoevsky but what i really love the most is fucking. i love fucking, stimulating my brain skin on skin you and me getting nasty spit on me i’m so smart love to read love to learn love to hate every day i build my own philosophy' manages to render nearly all of human experience embarrassing with its sneering tone. 

i heard a demo of Let’s Kill Ourselves in two of cfcf’s dj sets in the year preceding the albums announcement. memory’s hard to rely on but I swear the version he was playing had the original Pony's vocal over the instrumental present on the album, and the track was one of the best i had heard in a long time. the album version, also a single, has talky vocal fry driven vocals from Touching Ice & TECHG1RLS. the album blurb insists it turns the pony’s original into a ‘fuck it let’s live anthem’ but that’s not what I get from it at all. the mocking of the inanity of contemporary existence seems to render even suicide banal. comparatively the Pony’s original emanates a real pain, and the suggestion seems almost plausible, creating a dissonance the listener has to resolve on their own. the version heard was profound on the dancefloor, with the pained vocals over CFCFs immaculate electroclash beat giving voice to the darkness inside; diminishing its power while acknowledging its presence. the sneering vocal has the opposite effect, rendering a dark reality as just another example of gross self obsession. 

i won't go through every single track but dumb song is a stone cold classic, with cecile believe lending her industry tested topline writing skills to the pop dance earworm. cfcf's production is maybe at its best here as Silver channels his deep knowledge of 00s pop dance into a perfect rendition of a lost basement jaxx beat. worth noting that cecile is the album's only real pedigree'd feature, and she shows the power of a seasoned topline writer delivering the album’s only standout vocal performance. 

overall this is a dark album, burdened with cynicism and disillusionment. unlike the dreamy interiority of Memoryland, L.U.V. exists on the streets, in flesh and polyester. i’ve come to see the refrain from My Friend Fox as key to understanding the album:

“My friend Fox is a part time model. They found him last night face down in the gutter. My friend Fox pays for love with money. They bled his ass dry, left him broke for another. L.U.V. credit card sex pusher. You gotta pay up if you wanna be my lover. take you on a ride use you up throw you out, when I’m done with you you're gonna know what love is all about” 

this cold depiction of ... murdering sex workers? murdering johns? sexual violence and abuse? has a callous calm, portrayed with the same sneer as sex, suicide, and attention seeking. it’s by far the darkest cfcf has gone, showing up out of nowhere at the core of the record. the track is amazing, propulsive, exciting, approaching the thrills of peak vitalic. it is one of my favorites on the album, while also the peak of the albums unnerving tone. the darkness fits cfcf like a cheap hand me down suit, which is somehow all the more unnerving.

gone is the gentle euphoric dreamscape of Memoryland, replaced with scenes from the dark reality of a life lived in pursuit of pleasure and recognition in a city that’s hard not to read as Los Angeles, CFCF’s home since soon after the release of Memoryland. images of sex and lust are throughout the album, presented in cold fluorescent. detached, transactional, disgusted with human pleasure seeking, conjuring demented characters to externalize an alienation from embodied experience. 

taken as a whole, the album plays like an art film exploring the seedy recesses of human experience in day glo colours. the dream of Memoryland turned nightmare, the sting of the stark reality heightened by the fantasy that preceded it. 

L.A. has a way of bringing this out of people. a kind of mulholland drive-esque, LAX-psychosis. growing up here, it takes a really fresh take to make that premise compelling, but it seems like the city’s inescapable presence in the dream realm makes the confrontation with its reality a frequent cause of existential crisis. 

this crisis and collapse leads to LUV, and then The Love Hotel, two truly beautiful songs, among CFCF’s best, elevated further by the darkness that precedes them. LUV (Is Easy 2 Lose) plays like a sunrise crescendo, our hero reconciled with the love interest, driving off into the sunrise through rolling hills, stealing looks, in awe of the glisten of the city in the morning light. it's followed by Love Hotel, a gentle electro inflected ballad recalling kraftwerk's computer love, that builds over its near 11 minutes with emotion gradually flooding in. these tracks are grounded, contemplative, connected, present, real in a way not felt elsewhere on the LP. simple elements working to communicate a depth of emotion unburdened by sneering cynicism. LUV conquers all. stepping out of the hotel into the summer sun, we have a redux of kiss me, the 'euroversion', a return to a cheap plastic reality with bargain bin vocals to match.   

it's a curious album worthy of serious consideration. not just a collection of tracks, lottery tickets for top 40 play, but a narrative whole exploring sex, artifice, alienation, exploitation, cheap thrills, and finally real connection. maybe it’s part of the whole thing, but i wish the darkness was rendered more credibly, the cheap filler a bit more novel, a bit more compelling, or at least shorter. intentions notwithstanding, the effect of sifting through filler to unearth real thrills and flashes of connection is moving, if often unpleasant. 

i hope cfcf finds real love and connection, because he has the ability to make me feel anything, and here he chose to make me feel kind of weird and bad.  

imaginary softwoods - center for tactical magic 

Imaginary SoftwoodsCenter for Tactical Magic

another beautiful LP from imaginary softwoods. gentle twinkles and soft clouds drift by, imbuing your space with a sense of mystic calm. their previous LP is a constant go to for quiet moments, and this lp is a welcome addition to that rotation. as on the previous album, it features just enough psychedelic flourishes to push past passive decoration, asserting its will on the space as it weaves its spell. that also makes it compelling enough for focused deep listening. can't recommend this and the previous LP enough. 

shed - rave echoes

ShedRave Echoes

what to say about shed? the renowned producer, known also for his work under aliases WAX and Hoover1 among others, delivers an LP of his trademark sound. it's a hard sound to define, at once archetypal, referential, and completely his own. across his aliases there's a solidity to his productions. a tangible quality, a sense of shape, material, form and texture in space. sculptural, heavy, but gentle, warm and enveloping. the tracks on the LP twist familiar forms, pushing them just beyond instant recognition into a kind of hazy dream world. his palette is familiar, if a bit misshapen, drawing from classic sounds to deliver his vision of rave euphoria. soft but always heavy. a real master at the peak of his powers. restrained and highly potent. 

digitalism - optimism

DigitalismOptimism

if you're not a fan of digitalism's debut idealism, i don’t know if this will be worth your while but as a longtime lover of the german duo this return to form is irresistible. after many years mired in unconvincing edm, they return to a post rock inspired palette delivering euphoric electroclash. it’s a bit corny at times, but totally them with an unpolished untemplated quality that takes me right back to the late 00s. there’s no pogo here, no perfect gem, but the whole feels like a warm embrace from old friends. 

i think that's all for now. love you <3