Kaytranada introduced his new album with a hedge: “This album is strictly for exercises, dancing, and finding out for my individuals who love beats.” However in comparison with the overstuffed visitor star extravaganza Timeless, AIN’T NO DAMN WAY! is a cool breeze of a report at simply 34 minutes, all instrumentals, and just one function credit score. It lays naked the Canadian producer’s preternatural reward for making beats that bridge the hole between hip-hop, home, and mainstream EDM, infused with the Haitian rhythms he grew up with. He’s deep within the (consolation) zone right here, sticking to what he does finest: turning unlikely samples into deceptively advanced bangers. It’s the sound of an artist casually strolling into his imperial part, the place even his low-key tracks are sensible, floating only a few inches above everybody else.
Put one other means, AIN’T NO DAMN WAY! is a self-conscious return to Louis Kevin Celestin’s earliest days, when a good Janet Jackson edit set off a sequence response that led to him opening a complete Madonna tour in 2015. However this report is constructed with the expertise and experience of a decade spent within the FL Studio mines. Each drum hits with goal, the basslines stroll and burrow each which means, samples and voices are embedded in unusual however intuitive methods. It’s a beat tape that works as pop music for a era of followers who’ve been conditioned to view instrumental digital music as worthy of their consideration, too, because of distinguished representatives like Celestin himself.
First single “House Invader” comes along with a free and limber confidence not often heard in up to date dance music. At its core is an off-beat swing discovered from artists like J Dilla and different iconoclastic producers. Kaytranada orbits round every part from mid-’80s Prince to peak-era Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to the skeletal future-funk of the Neptunes, who produced the Kelis tune that “House Invader” samples. Nevertheless it’s no mere remix. Celestin rearranges the vocals, Burial-style, in order that they make a phrase that doesn’t exist within the authentic tune, the which means and feelings twisted into one thing new, and there’s no hint of the unique’s oddball tropical funk. It feels traditional in at the least 4 alternative ways, however it’s additionally glittering and fashionable, the uncommon instance of an artist getting down to please everybody and perhaps succeeding.
AIN’T NO DAMN WAY! is consummately easy, however it rewards shut studying and detective work. Good issues are occurring beneath the gleaming floor: Simply take heed to how he twists 808 State’s heat acid home traditional “Pacific State” into overheated concrete jungle hip-hop full with ’90s G-funk squiggles. It’s virtually unrecognizable, however old-school techno heads can nonetheless clock it. Much more spectacular is his flip of Tangerine Dream’s “Love On a Actual Prepare” with “Championships,” a Donuts-calibre edit that turns the German kosmische group inside out with little or no left of its authentic temper or sound. As an alternative, it simply appears like Kaytranada doing just a little Slum Village worship, immediately recognizable as his personal music slightly than a Tangerine Dream tune. Talking of Slum Village, there’s additionally the gorgeous “Shine Your Mild For We,” which reworks a Barry-White-via-Cappadonna pattern right into a beat that worships on the altar of Detroit legend Andrés: feel-good however rickety, pleasure with the barest trace of unhappiness beneath.
