It might have been a while since MB readers last heard from Freedust (put it down to Covid and life happening in general) but the Italian outfit is back with new album Groove Chronicles and a twelve-track set for your delectation. If you’ve caught this lot before you’ll know their angle is broadly a contemporary update of the breakbeat-based sound that regularly graced the pop charts in the late 90s/ early 2000s and the new album very capably delivers in this vein once again.
Opener, On The Move, combines a drum break that is technically drum n bass (up in the high 160s) with a double bass bassline and an 80s-ish female funk vocal setting out a jaunty dancefloor stall that is immediately backed up by the squelchy electronic funk groove of Electric. Up next is earworm What We’ve Lost which features Mabreezee and is one of the LPs few slower tracks, nodding to 90s trip-hop with echoes of Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry’s 7 Seconds as the Afro-Portuguese singer’s vocals duet with the Freedust singers. Album highlight and obvious single material is the the massive horns-drenched breakbeat pop of Do Your Thing (and a shoe-in for a future add-sync if the monkey’s ever heard one!) while the first half of the album wraps up with the midtempo boom-bap of Did You Hear The News featuring Bardo and the only other real downtempo-ish cut of Wilderness Is Real‘s electronica. Don’t expect a second half that offers any slackening of quality though for this commences with another obvious single – the late 40s/early 50s swing-influenced retro of Swing A Little Bit before taking a turn into yet another obvious single with the bassy Like Sugar-ish funk of When You Gonna Groove. Just Do It returns to the funky dnb stylings of the opener adding a retro organ motif while the album’s finally trio of cuts encompasses the poppy stomp of Take It Easy, the poppy Lucci Damus and Rebecca Houlihan-featuring Latin-tinged trip-hop of You Got To Believe It and Fatboy Slim-ish uptempo Nobody’s Gonna Stop Me. In short this is a highly capable and consistent set of well-crafted breakbeat-based material with finely burnished pop sensibilities that you wish was playing down at the gym instead of half the crap that pumps out over the screens and speakers.
(Out now on Danca)