- I love the term ‘left-leaning musician’. It’s oft-repeated in Horatio Luna’s promo screed and, to my mind at least, throws up an image of Henry Hicks, the man behind all the beat-driven, jazzy excursions Horatio Luna engages in, beret perched jauntily on his head, nasty little submachine gun slung over his shoulder, bass guitar in hand and Mao’s Little Red Book burning a whole in the pocket of his combat fatigues. I don’t think that’s really what he had in mind; instead I believe he’s referring to his very productive fusion of complex, jazzy stylings and propulsive dance beats.
It’s a bit difficult to believe that Yes Doctor represents Luna’s debut full-length. If you take a look at his bandcamp, it’s littered with collaborations, one-offs and spontaneous passion projects all churned out sometime between now and 2017. On top of that you have to add his tenure as bassist for the highly-regarded neo-soulers 30/70. Then, of course, that doesn’t even include Horatio’s label work as one of the bosses of La Sape. I first ran across it with the release of two full-lengths by the excellent and similarly minded fusion outfit Godtet. The label is home to much more than that, however, and they recently released a compilation, downundaground, promising a swag of fusion magic for 2020. Actually, perhaps it's no surprise this LP has taken a while getting here.
There’s lots of different and fruitful interpretations of how jazzy beats can be worked, in the La Sape roster, but how does Luna do it himself? On Yes Doctor, especially as the record kicks off, Luna’s background as a bassist seems to be key. After the thoroughly baked reggae intro, Some Like It Hot, featuring a red-eyed little rap from Throne Boy, the game commences properly with seven minutes of intense action on the titular Yes Doctor. It feels really stripped back, right to the rhythm section and thoroughly driven by percussion. Sometimes the melody comes from a Rhodes, but often the bass grabs it and sometimes, hey why not just have three minutes of syncopated snare for a lead line? It’s very funky, very dancey and kinda like some of the eurobeat stuff you’d have heard in the last twenty years on a label like !K7 or on Ninja Tune back in the ‘90s. There’s quite a lot on the record that’s reminiscent of nu-jazz fusionists like Cinematic Orchestra, Jagga Jazzist or Jazzanova, but it feels like Horatio Luna is pushing the envelope much harder than they ever did, paring things back right to the fundamentals and working those to the limit. He’s certainly made some ballsy choices to open his album.
Luna Landing is also pretty stripped back, but when it comes down to it, is a slightly more forgiving jazz house (just teetering on the edge of techno), packing some pretty lush interludes and funky backbeats that’d prick DJ Shadow’s ears up. There are whole track interludes, too, and they do suture they record together nicely; like the deep, disco house bridge, Your Love, which is again putting the drums right at the front of the mix and teasing a techno banger that doesn’t quite get to the club in the one-and-three-quarter-minutes the track has available. It morphs perfectly into the deceptively minimal, but really quite funky house of Bubbly. The synth highlights sound like they might be borrowed from Madonna’s Vogue, but we never flip out into a vocal anthem; instead Luna is quite content to construct everything out of sinuously subtle funk.
Golden starts out teasing us again, this time with a wild bass solo a-la Thundercat, but no, we’re going to spend the next six minutes going Latin. As per the Luna blueprint it’s very skeletal to begin with, but feels more and more disco as the reverb washes over the Rhodes, piano and bass. The rhythms get insanely complex before recapitulating with Mr. Thundercat (or in this case Henry Hicks) for a bassy finish. As if that’s not quite enough of an opportunity for Hicks to exhibit his skills, Northern Beaches is basically an excuse for one long bass solo. Fair enough: you got the chops, why not show them off?
The penultimate number, Brunswick Massive in its very name seems a bit tongue in cheek. It feels like an acknowledgement of just how indebted to the late ‘90s Yes Doctor is, as it -somewhat less delicately than usual- sutures a drum’n’bass beat to a nearly three minute piano solo. Closer Brunswick Massive Pt.2, mirrors the opener, with a smokey slice of reggae, floating in the reverb with more of those chiming keys.
Horatio Luna says that he really pushed himself in the creation of Yes Doctor, going right to the edge of what his skills would allow and that is quite evident. The last couple of tracks notwithstanding, there’s remarkably little that’s gimmicky here. It’s less the songs here that impress than the rhythm section which powers them and, boy, does it power them. It’s the work of a musician’s musician, going for it with no respite. It reminds me of some of Danny Krivit’s stuff from the late ‘70s, where he was digging breaks out of disco records and looping them into proto-techno. It’s powerfully effective in the club, even if it doesn’t give a damn about tunes for the radio. I don’t think Horatio does give a damn anyway: the next twenty projects he’s got on the boil are probably taking up all his attention. Just quietly, I’ve a feeling that if he’s involved then they’ll all be powerfully effective.
- Chris Cobcroft.