It’s a cliché within dance music to say that albums are difficult. Borrowing a format from non-electronic music that sits at odds with DJ sets means producers have to up their game. They can’t rely on just producing bangers, which get tedious after forty minutes and don’t work well on home speakers. New York’s Anthony Naples, though, has always been able to create records which inhabit the more interesting sonic niches, most notably on his Trilogy Tapes releases (El Portal and Zipacon), which manage to sound both airy and abstract all at once.
Naples also likes to experiment with the structure of traditional dance EPs – his 2013 Rubadub release, RAD-AN1 had two uncredited short interludes, as might be found on a radio show or album. Body Pill, his first LP, comes in at under half an hour and fits on one record, so could perhaps be seen as taking this approach to its logical conclusion.
The record leaps pretty quickly into the track that we’ll surely be hearing the most on dancefloors: ‘Abrazo’ is an emotional string-heavy track that elevates itself above all the ‘Deep Burnt’ clones, with production that forces the strings through a 1930s radio. The nostalgia of the production matches the nostalgia of the melody. ‘Changes’ and ‘Way Stone’ sound like they could have been taken from a Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland recording session, all woozy synths and delayed snares, whilst ‘Riz’ moves from low key ambience to an almost krautrock rhythm. Naples makes good use of his interludes, with ‘Pale’ managing to bridge the gap between the upbeat house banger ‘Refugio’ and the heavy ‘Used To Be’, which recalls Bristolian purple dubstep at its moodiest.
Naples’ strength is his ability to mesh together tracks with such disparate influences, which is partly due to his excellent, fuzzy drum production as well as his innate sense of narrative. He structures the record similarly to a multi-genre mixtape, and its success shows how we are reaping the benefits of the post-format internet age.
Body Pill is out now via Text Records. Naples is set to play alongside Fred P and Funkineven at the Stamp The Wax & Shapes party in Bristol on 27th March. Click here for full event information.
