The Black 80s – Heart To Art

Everything is just perfect for once. From the ambiguous band name to the cheeky album title and the ten productions at hand everything hits the mark and therewith satisfies the spirit of these times.

The Black 80s come up with probably the best club album by far this year with „Heart To Art“. It’s an album fully equipped with hits designed for the club but also proper songs you want to hear during your workout, in your car, to clean your kitchen to, and so on.

„Russian Roulette“ , „And You Feel Something“ and „Trembling“ are three of the songs for example you’d don’t want to play in the background for no particular reason. The basslines are too gripping, the vocals by Franck Julien aka Overnite too emphatic and the pressure set up by the tight productions is simply too assertive to resist. If Hollis P. Monroe wasn’t making music for ages (first release in 1997 for Stickman Records), you could almost get the idea that someone internalized the sound of fellow Montreal based Kaytranada totally and intensified it for the club.

The music of Monroe and Julien has precious little to do with the Eighties. Even “Daylight”, together with Hamburg based Yannick Labbé and Augsburg based Dominik Marz, with its perky synth bassline and the jaunty melody sounds much too much of now and here than of anything resembling something from yesteryear. The spoken word track “Where’s The Money” is a masterpiece of reluctance and of a futuristic deepness current club music lacks most of the time. Only “Wake Up” breaks ranks within the ten album tracks. Almost like a summer anthem-like riddim from Jamaica the tune is the most merry of the oeuvre. “Heart To Art” is one of these unusual albums transporting its very own distinctive sound and a incomparable aesthetic.

Something you hear rarely, but outmost willingly.