A trans-Atlantic partnership of like-minded and similarly skilled talents, the duo behind Call Sender – whose second LP, Golden Langur, is just out – have been sending ideas swinging through the digital ether for the last four years. Consisting of Suffolk-based Paul Elliott and Bay Area-based Michael Reed, the outfit’s constituent ‘parts’ are both multi-instrumentalists and recording engineers and both have a love of vintage drum breaks and the soul, jazz, funk, psych sound spectrum.
While this album’s predecessor Lost To The Storm came out on Tru Thoughts and ploughed a pretty straight retro-psych-funk path), Golden Langur provides a more stylistically varied set that includes two vocal cuts and some impressive guest appearances. If you wanted a sense of the quality on offer here, for example, consider that Shawn Lee features on opening track Brainforests (which does offer retro-library-psych-funk thrills similar to both the last LP and the sort of material that comes out on Markey Funk’s Delights label) while no less than JJ Whitefield turns up on the reverbed-out, two-tempos-toting, guitar-led psychedelia of Two Tails. The first of the vocal tracks is The Night I Fell featuring Andre Cruz an electronica-adjacent bit of neo-soul with Cruz doing a Marvin/ Pharrell-ish bit of falsetto on the hook. The second vocal cut appearing somewhat later in the set, The Way Home feat. Lucid Paradise, falls under the same sonic umbrella and throbs along on a splendidly distinctive bassline. Among the remainder of tracks, Laura and especially Sea Defence deliver the sort of psychedelic jazz-funk that will appeal to fans of the Oz-psych mafia of Pro-teens/ Surprise Chef/ Karate Boogaloo while Circle is more 80s-influenced instrumentalisms. The synth-work on the title-track also betrays more 80s-style library music influences and this one features Eastern-inspired percussion while a case could be made that Yutori nods to more modern sounds still. The monkey’s favourite cut (alongside the opener) however is the Buddy Elliott-featuring Rainbow which contains arguably the album’s fattest drum-break. The set is closed by instrumentals of the two vocal numbers. More varied than either their debut or works by like-minded contemporaries, Golden Langur is full of ideas and suggests Call Sender have plenty more to swing through yet.
(Out now on Farfalla France)