APPAREL REVIEW:

EMAMKAY
Love Is Energy
[STY TRU BTS]

 

The record we are talking about today can be elegant and rough, sweet and bitter. It can be a warm caress at the time of day when you search for peace of mind or charge you with energy when you need to keep going.

In short, EMAMKAY's album 'Love Is Energy' can tell mixed emotions, but above all strong ones. You can feel it from the very start, when the softness of the opening track 'Love Is Energy' is overwhelmed by the vigorous push of the beat of 'SENSE', masterfully arranged -in which we can find many sound elements that recur within the LP like Soul, Funk, R&B and Hip-Hop- replaced immediately by the quiet class of the following 'TEMBISA' which instantly takes the audience back to another musical dimension, serene and sweet. The predominant feature of this record is its unpredictability. You never know what to expect, whether a raw beat or a Soul ballad like ‘Thandis’, a Jazz improvisation or a perfectly orchestrated harmonic progression like the one present in ‘Crossroads Etude’. The author EMAMKAY therefore presents himself as a worthy ambassador of the new sound coming from his homeland, South Africa, which has always been extremely rich in new musical waves and a country of great passions, great charm and also, indeed, of great cultural contrasts. For all the above mentioned reasons, we cannot be surprised if the musicians who he considers as his sonic ‘mentors’ are the likes of FlyLo, Dilla, D'Angelo, to the genius of controlled chaos that is John Coltrane. However, in his album, EMAMKAY manages to mix all these influences without suspecting a major one of a particular artist. It’s simply very pleasant to abandon oneself to his sound, to the novelty he brings and to the natural simplicity with which he does it, without having make comparisons with other music. The mastery with which EMAMKAY has assembled the recordings made together with his band, composed of five musicians, is typical of those artists who do what they do effortlessly, in an organic and natural way. The result is a modern and fresh combination of live music and electronic music elements, which makes 'Love Is Energy' a complete album from every angle: that of pre-production, post production, arrangement and the message that the artist wants to convey through the music and the lyrics. Everything is perceivable in a very clear, clean and strong way, without having to speculate too much on the details nor searching in the folds of the scores. Issued on STY TRU SOUNDS -Kid Fonque's London based label- Love Is Energy is an ‘ode to love’ and ‘a story about how this energy fuels us to go the extra mile’, by the artist’s own words, and in fact the references to this ‘energy’ are plenty throughout the LP, whose lyrics also describe such a vast range of strong human emotions, masterly sang and translated in music by the South African producer. A true gem.

 

APPAREL REVIEW:

EMAMKAY
Love Is Energy
[STY TRU BTS]

 

The record we are talking about today can be elegant and rough, sweet and bitter. It can be a warm caress at the time of day when you search for peace of mind or charge you with energy when you need to keep going.

In short, EMAMKAY's album 'Love Is Energy' can tell mixed emotions, but above all strong ones. You can feel it from the very start, when the softness of the opening track 'Love Is Energy' is overwhelmed by the vigorous push of the beat of 'SENSE', masterfully arranged -in which we can find many sound elements that recur within the LP like Soul, Funk, R&B and Hip-Hop- replaced immediately by the quiet class of the following 'TEMBISA' which instantly takes the audience back to another musical dimension, serene and sweet. The predominant feature of this record is its unpredictability. You never know what to expect, whether a raw beat or a Soul ballad like ‘Thandis’, a Jazz improvisation or a perfectly orchestrated harmonic progression like the one present in ‘Crossroads Etude’. The author EMAMKAY therefore presents himself as a worthy ambassador of the new sound coming from his homeland, South Africa, which has always been extremely rich in new musical waves and a country of great passions, great charm and also, indeed, of great cultural contrasts. For all the above mentioned reasons, we cannot be surprised if the musicians who he considers as his sonic ‘mentors’ are the likes of FlyLo, Dilla, D'Angelo, to the genius of controlled chaos that is John Coltrane. However, in his album, EMAMKAY manages to mix all these influences without suspecting a major one of a particular artist. It’s simply very pleasant to abandon oneself to his sound, to the novelty he brings and to the natural simplicity with which he does it, without having make comparisons with other music. The mastery with which EMAMKAY has assembled the recordings made together with his band, composed of five musicians, is typical of those artists who do what they do effortlessly, in an organic and natural way. The result is a modern and fresh combination of live music and electronic music elements, which makes 'Love Is Energy' a complete album from every angle: that of pre-production, post production, arrangement and the message that the artist wants to convey through the music and the lyrics. Everything is perceivable in a very clear, clean and strong way, without having to speculate too much on the details nor searching in the folds of the scores. Issued on STY TRU SOUNDS -Kid Fonque's London based label- Love Is Energy is an ‘ode to love’ and ‘a story about how this energy fuels us to go the extra mile’, by the artist’s own words, and in fact the references to this ‘energy’ are plenty throughout the LP, whose lyrics also describe such a vast range of strong human emotions, masterly sang and translated in music by the South African producer. A true gem.