Layo Paskin and Matthew ‘Bushwacka!’ build upon their seedy but well heeled origins and the storm created by their 2002 hit, ‘Love Story’ with an album that falls unevenly between two camps. No I’m not talking about those fudgepackin’ uphill gardening kind of camps like Graham Norton and Lawrence Llewelyn – I’m talking about two different kinds of camps – the thumping, sizzling, beeping electro base-camp that is that beat-surrendering floor drill, ‘Life2Live’ and the salsa lounge-lizardry of ‘Me and You’ (featuring Groove Armada’s Tim Hutton, no less) Add to this the cool latin machinery of louche title track ‘Feels Closer’, the jazz mayhem of ‘Smith Street’ and the solid kitsch rhythms of the Joe Jackson-lifting ‘Ride The Train’ and you have quite an exotic cocktail, with enough drum fills to sink a liner.
Recorded in London, Brazil and New York with an illustrious crew of live jazz musicians, including Weather Report percussionist Mino Cinelu, ‘Feels Closer’ continues to explore the jetsetting lifestyle that made ‘Night Works’ such a likeable Cunard cruise only this time with more warmth, more subtlety and more swarthy looking South Americans than you could throw a stick at. ‘Sunshine In Ipanema’ might sound like the Arctic Monkey’s Alex Turner turning tricks in the car park of Hotel Copacabana but the slurring, daydream vocal rhythms that Rogerio Flausino brings to the broth see me packing my shorts and hitting the duty-free shop in no time. And there’s another discrete slice of portamento too cropping up on the buzz cutting Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong conundrum, ‘Isn’t This A Lovely Day’.
Sophisticated latechno riding a drum and Reais tip; occasionally untidy but on the whole quite smart.