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LP
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IFEEL 087LP
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Île Flottante is Mr. Beatnick´s fifth album, following 2023's Joy In Variation (including the notorious cover of "Love on a Real Train") and his well-received off-beat collaboration with London-based avant-garde agitator Richard Greenan -- Coasty -- this is his first contribution to the International Feel trademark. Probably best known for some big deep house revivalist tunes circa 2013 on the now dormant Don't Be Afraid record label, Beatnick now converts that aural quality and dimensionality into the Balearic system. Île Flottante takes its name from the tastiest French pudding of Mr. Beatnick's childhood holidays. The name, also a jeux de mots -- floating island -- hinting at the album's inspirations and sense of identity, as a danceable soundtrack to a fictional island. Explored with high intensity and over a yearlong process, the sounds of the well-worn, but never-failing Balearic universes were a mind-expanding influence. Think of genre staples like Software, Manuel Goettsching, Mark Barrott, Len Leise, Don Carlos, Gaussian Curve, Joan Bibiloni, or Yasuaki Shimuzu. Île Flottante tries its very hardest to avoid being any one thing in particular. At one point, it is a gentle beach walk accompanied by polyrhythmic drum plod and flourishes of Guzheng. At another, the infamous James Yancey septuplet swing is repurposed against a marimba melody that wouldn't be out of place in one of Link's forest adventures. Elsewhere, there are the bellows of distant whales, touches of Italian dream house and a splash of vintage madchester, all working to create a space that feels both familiar and loaded with well-worn tropes, but with its own quirky sense of personality, facets which are often attributed to Mr. Beatnick's holistic b-boy approach. This is his understanding of a Balearic (b-boy) stance. Just with a float instead of a freeze.
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