On 2018’s ZEBRA, Australian producer Alexis Georgopoulos, AKA Arp, crafted a record of considered, near immaculate psychtronica. Alongside a bevy of collaborators, Arp created an impressively detailed soundscape that traversed the planes between nature and science fiction. ZEBRA was an eclectic, sometimes transcendent, landscape of earthy drum loops, sunny keys, and undulating acid arpeggios. To call his new album New Pleasures a sequel of sorts doesn’t seem quite right with respect to these merits, yet for Arp, New Pleasures is the next chapter in what he regards as his Zebra Trilogy.
While the subject matter guiding the direction of ZEBRA found itself fixated on notions of the pastoral, New Pleasures is engaged with the urban and industrial grid of the city. In practice, the music here follows the same approach as ZEBRA, pulling from a myriad of diverse influences and styles. The difference in locale however means that on New Pleasures, this approach is not immediately as striking. The slick city pop and midnight drive energy of the title track for instance, is nothing entirely new in the scope of urban inspired electronica, with its gated reverb and neon soaked synth riffs. Sponge (for Miyake) feels similarly worn in, recalling (perhaps too soon) the recent work of Shinichi Atobe. New Pleasures also seems to get gridlocked by its own structure. The cartography of the city gives Arp less space to gallop as he often did on ZEBRA, making for something much more cagey.
Download and stream New Pleasures here
This claustrophobia is not always to Arp’s detriment, however. On Eniko it works in layers of sinister industrial rumbles and grinds beneath the computerised xylophones and happy-go-lucky shuffle of the song’s city pop beat to create a sinister omnipresence that recalls the lurking dangers of any city. On La Palace, there’s an electric thrum to the cacophony of percussion styles, keys, and stabs that more successfully transposes the ‘anything could happen’ jubilance of the city by night. Cloud Storage, the album’s ultimate conclusion, is the most space Arp allows himself and his ideas. The result is the closest he gets to a proper ZEBRA sequel. A spacey, incongruous composition that swells and contracts with waves of drone synths and hydraulic stutters, Cloud Storage is the most successful application of ZEBRA’s musicality to the urban landscape.
There’s a quiet sort of perfection to the way Arp creates music. Because of the spaciousness of ZEBRA, this was given more room to breathe and expand so that it felt more organic rather than meticulous. With New Pleasures, this obsessiveness is more pronounced, almost too much so at times. But this may also come from comparing New Pleasures too closely with its predecessor. It is, in fact, its own beast entirely. Precision is otherwise essential to the functioning of the city; its life locked into this grid that brings about a sense of unpredictability. While New Pleasures has this precision on lock, it misses too much of the chaos of urban existence to truly thrive.
Listen to Eniko from New Pleasures below.
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