Reviews 087: Miskotom
Miskotom’s Midnight Baddie on Balearic is one of the best releases all year (if not THE best digital release) and showed the Lithuanian partners Mikhail Pletnev and Aleksandra Evseeva taking the sounds of Qi Xin Mian Guan and their tracks on Dreamtime III and mixing them in with some sweltering balearic heat. And now the much anticipated Palms Leisure Club has arrived on Pleasure Wave (the sublabel of Pleasure Unit), further combining these already irresistible elements with humid tropical atmospheres and some loved up dreamhouse brilliance. Marimbas and vibraphones intertwine with jungle ambiance as deep boogie rhythms alternate with beatless hypnotics, and everything just glows with the warmth of euphoria.
Miskotom - Palms Leisure Club (Pleasure Wave, 2018) We start with “Hyena’s Laugh,” wherein wood flutes and house basslines sit over a tom-tom heavy beat. Mallet instruments cycle hypnotically and dreamy pads wash in, accompanied by alien laughter and chimes falling like rain. Eventually the groove evolves into a strutting banger with emotional saxophone arcs and flutey percolations flying over the ultra deep rhythmics. The jungle atmospheres pull away at times, allowing woodwinds to dance alone to the body moving flow, while at other times the kick drops out, leaving synths to pulse like cosmic breath over hand drums and ecstatic electronics. “Senoi” sees another slow motion house stomp covered in delirium loops of marimba and outerspace insect noises. The growling grooving synthbass is pure magic and as the rhythmic flow grows funky and propulsive, twilight chords fall over the mix like silk and flutey leads intertwine with dreamy Italo chimes. There is a percussion heavy midsection, drums stomping away as the synths slowly fade back in alongside rainforest fx and floating metallic sounds, and for the rest of the track elements of the beat are brought in and out in captivating ways, transforming the song from lush romance to abstract tribal drum dance and back again, but always with marimbas casting their looping spells overhead.
The glowing pads and e-pianos of “10th Day” drift above a hypnotic jazz shuffle, everything building in anticipation only to zone out for a dubwise jam, all smokey funk keys falling from the heavens and moody pads streaking into the night. At some point the groove locks in as pianos dance over the hallucinatory house brilliance only for the drums to quickly cut away, leaving the duo drifting in an ambient dreamscape. And once the subaquatic kick flow returns, we see mesmerizing keys move aimlessly over bass stabs and vintage rhythm boxes, while cold streaks of synthesis swim through the air. For “Kuai Chan Che”, flutes circle eternally as lofi cymbals and modulated mallet tones converse with the off-kilter bass and drum flow. A beatless passage with smeared synthetic vibraphones leads to a hard hitting and anxious rhythm, as industrial metal sounds and flutes dance and pan all around. Hopeful rave pads swell up from the depths and the synthbass drops irresistible melodies, giving the track an epic feel despite how angular and jaunty the beats are. And up in the trees, exotic woodwinds sing like tropical birds and shimmering keys break through the canopy like golden rays of light. Our visit to the Palms Leisure Club ends with “Kopiec” and its mirage-like web of jungle atmospherics, emotional basslines, 808 rimshots, and morphing sequences. The whole thing shimmers with a new age light, as majestic as it cosmic, with noisy arps and reverb fx leading to a low slung ambient beat…just cymbals and snare alongside strangely effected chords and hallucinatory synth repetitions.
(images from my personal copy)
