Pit Spector – Oeuvre Dark

By now these two have a history together, but just by checking what they've already done together there really was little telling about what this collection was going to sound like. Ark loves his silly disted samples, Pit Spector seems to bring up actual melodies for these, and the results are all over the place: 'Fish' is inviting as fuck but loses steam midway through, not everyone is going to dig the big guest rapping in 'Grand Huit' (which sounds a lot like the latest Oizo) and if you think something more could have happened in "A Song for Everyone", i can't really blame you (of all of the tracks they've done, why was this one included in here?). Then there's these numbers on which the synthesis of both styles is flawlessly, bizarrely achieved: "Maître Nims" with its cute melody and pumping dance beats, the ghostly, haunting mess of fragments and harmonics in "ABCDR", and even "Purple Call", the weirdest piece of this whole thing with its creepy voices all over. Both opening and closer numbers, on which Ark does some of his shy guitar magic, convey a super chill mood (to be destroyed by the second track) and close the deal with a rather meditative feel respectively. In the end an album just as busy and incohesive as the artwork it's wrapped in, but there's no denying there's some serious business to be found on it, and it certainly shows these two growing and maturing their game into something definitely unique, not to mention fun, but certainly not as radical as it was on their previous endeavours, which honestly figures. Some edge is missed.

PD: watch out, the digital version of the album (Lippie, which definitely lifts the instrumental version (included on the physical release) quite a notch. odd move for sure.