Albums
January: 18 albums you need to hear this month
That's the month sorted then
AYBEE 'The Odyssey' (Deepblak)
Lots of dance producers like to claim their music is ‘jazzy’, but few can make the claim as authentically as Aybee. The Berlin-based American is a student of Miles Davis and Sun Ra, and that always shows in his expressive and freeform electronic music. His new LP, however, finds him limiting his sonic palette. The result is something that, while as cosmic as ever, is also a little more conventionally structured. Broken beat, house and techno are the underlying forms here, but the colour outside those grooves is what sets them apart: xylophones, deep space ambiance, warm solar pads and percussion that flies by like interplanetary debris all help keep you in orbit, a world away from here, lost in your own mental imagery. Kristan J Caryl
8/10
