Inspired by everything. Dilla is king 👑 🍩

bedroom bops and more https://linktr.ee/lewismartinsounds

It's got the temperature of the yacht rock paradise that everyone today longs to visit, but the details make it more than just a retro recreation. No one should be blamed for reaching for comparisons to Hall & Oates, but the admixture is a little more unexpected--rather than replicating an album from the 70s, they're formulating something that never quite happened. Imagine Stevie Wonder producing a Loggins & Messina album--or The Isleys working with Captain & Tennille. Don't dismiss the Captain! "Muskrat Love" was diaphanously funky. Abe and Jake would understand. 

You can tell the duo has session experience--they show the taste and restraint that comes from playing behind greats, from doing more with less, from crafting a statement out of something small. The songs are breezy and easy but each has its little ingenious touches. The way a bassline is configured against the beat in "Selfish Endeavor"; the way a chorus turns around and melts into the bridge on "It's Easy." They tuck the magic tricks and sonic surprises into the folds of pop songs, which reminds me a little of 10cc, but with way less layers in the cake.

It's not just duo music in name only--you can hear Jake and Abe in sync on every track. There's a simplicity and intimacy to everything that makes it feel like these songs belong to two minds, two mouths, four hands, making music in a room together. These four tracks have the detailing of a debut, but the spareness of a demo. The tracks are simple but deeply pocketed. They're uncluttered but with channels cut that invite all those bubble-bath analog keyboard sounds to flow through the songs in rivulets. This is either a demo that's been given the richness of an album, or an album that has the intimacy of a demo.

More than anything else, those keyboards get me high. I first saw Jake and Abe playing in the back room of Custom Vintage Keyboards in North Hollywood (a YouTube clip) and even though I know better there's part of me that still thinks of them as brothers hatched and happily raised in a private nest of Rhodes and Moogs and Clavinets. 

-Sam Sweet
 
Chances are you have heard them without realizing it, as they have performed with Madison Cunningham, Meshell Ndegeocello, Seal, Chance the Rapper, Bilal, Nick Hakim, Andrew Bird, Blood Orange and though still in their twenties, have appeared on over 200 records.

taylor vos is following