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CMU Approved
Approved: Anushka
By Aly Barchi | Published on Thursday 25 September 2014
Anushka is/are Brighton-based Victoria Port and Max Wheeler, and ‘Broken Circuit’ is the record the pair released earlier this year via Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings.
In many ways, ‘Circuit’ is totally not a ‘fashionable’ LP. It isn’t cold, or impassive, or especially ‘hard to get’; nor is it deliberately abstract, or iced over with the off-time drill-bit beats that so many of the acts on labels like, say, Fade To Mind, Hyperdub, or PC Music have made the fixed traits of their ‘aesthetic’. It hasn’t Banks’ modish blankness, or Kelela’s chilly sensuality, or Sophie‘s erm… whatever that thing is that Sophie has.
Instead, tracks like the wistful, day-dreaming ‘Never Can Decide’ and sweet-as-pie ‘I Have Love 4 U’ are warm, immediate, and heart-on-sleeve-happy, even; setting Port’s treacly, Erykah Badu-ish cadence as the melting middle to Wheeler’s ‘new classic’-style arrangements.
In short, ‘Broken Circuit’ is a rare case of a vocalist and producer working 100% in sync with each other and, probably more importantly, the kind of album that’s good to play all the way through, any day. Like now, for instance. It really is that simple.
Catch Anushka live when they play a line of shows (listings and tickets here) starting this Saturday (27 Sep) at The Trades Club in Hebden Bridge.
And this is last-but-one ‘Broken Circuit’ track ‘Mansions’:
