News / / 01.11.13

CONNAN MOCKASIN

CARAMEL (Phantasy Sound)

16/20

It was way back in 2011 that an intrepid cosmic traveller from a strange and faraway place (also known as New Zealand) first descended on our unassuming ears like a velvet supernova. Piloting a craft of swooning, psychedelic anti-pop from somewhere beyond the freak-o-sphere, Connan Mockasin landed a debut album so unlike anything else that it felt like holding your ear up to a wormhole and hearing the switchboard operator on Alpha Centauri.

Given shelter over at Erol Alkan’s Phantasy Sound imprint, Forever Dolphin Love was undoubtedly one of the most original and unexpected successes of that year. We seem to recall getting high a LOT in the months following its release. Now, over two years later, its much-feted author returns with the follow-up, and it seems his latest space odyssey has brought with it an altogether raunchier change in direction.

If FDL was the soundtrack to ripping bongs across the Milky Way, Caramel is like touching down on Venus for the afterparty with the Cat from Red Dwarf and a whole room of those green-skinned babes Captain Kirk was so fond of. Put simply, Caramel is an intergalactic get jiggy album, and with it Connan has set his phaser to ‘yum’.

The intent is clear from the start. Less kicking, more drifting off with Nothing Lasts Forever – a track so spaced out it should probably come with a warning not to operate heavy machinery in its presence – the first voice heard is not Connan’s now-trademark warbling falsetto, but a pitched down Bootsy Collins-esque concierge, enticing us in to the album’s steamy boudoir. It’s a tough offer to refuse. Even more so once the satin smooth guitars of I’m The Man, That Will Find You drop in, packing more fornicating funk into their slow-jamming five minutes than an evening with Isaac Hayes and a roaring fire.

Moving on, and with track titles like Do I Make You Feel Shy and It’s your Body (an endlessly uncoiling serenade that’s stretched out over five parts, making up the majority of the album), you know things are only heading in one direction. Connan’s voice frequently takes a back seat, giving the jams plenty of space to sweat, pant, and breathe their way deeper, and the mood is more one of hyper-freaky grooves than the narcotic storytelling of the first record.

Before long, however, things emerge on the other side for the triumphant climax of Roll With You. Granted, it’s a song Connan’s been playing live for more than two years now, but at the end of a journey like Caramel those irresistibly Prince-like vocals are like a familiar post-coital embrace lulling us off to a delicious slumber, and all we want to do is replay the experience all over again.

 

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Words: Alex Gwilliam

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