Optimists by Mittland och Leo

( LP (JJ002) is sold out, repress still available here: http://www.jjfunhouse.com/shop/jj0022 )

"'Optimists’ is Mittland och Leo’s first long player after those 45 swings on Ultra Eczema. These hi-hat tropics will blow those future autumn leaves straight out of your head, although bass lines in this LP bump ever so gently towards the softer edge of the dance floor. The bittersweet synth lines switching between Atomium-era exotica and the memory of a perfect summer lone gone by, will tickle your brain where it hurts so good. Nobody can surf that peculiar wave as good as Milan Warmoeskerken and Joke Leonare. The melancholic twins who are behind all this magic.

It's like there's living a bunch of crickets underneath this black plastic, with just the right amount of winter angst in their crazy tweeting minds to enjoy summer even harder. You can hear them loud and clearly in ‘Ascona’, mechanical insect funk all the way and in fact throughout the whole album. This record is more like a mental travel companion then a proper dance floor effort. Never the less the duo throws you back in reality with ‘Earth Beat’, a raw but perfect machine-rhythm and bouncy bass draws you deeper and deeper towards the dance, with the melody as broken heart candy running through its pumping veins. Every beat on this album is quite smart in a simple way: minimal yet ever so funky, which makes all this repetition just endless fun. It sounds like that perfect rhythm-box from the early eighties nobody has ever seen, because Martin Rev had the only one, which he bought from some kind of suicidal princess of the avant-avant garde and even he lost it. Welcome back from nowhere!

The whole lp sounds vaguely retro but even more timeless, contemporary freshness included. Song after song there's a steady and natural flow till the thing stops. Like an industrial landscape that makes you smile for some crazy reason, Optimists indeed. The spiky kind. No fake jams that are lost in honey dripping layers of cosmic goat cheese here folks! Classic stuff, just drop the needle on first song ‘Decades’ and off you go."

Tracklist

1.	Decades	3:11

2.	Heat Wave II	3:03

3.	Ascona	2:34

4.	Earth Beat	4:25

5.	Attitude	3:25

6.	Domino	5:32

7.	Transatlantic	3:13

8.	Rhythm Ace	2:03

Credits

released October 3, 2014

label : Jj funhouse
cat nr : JJ002 & JJ002.2
artwork : Jj funhouse
mix : Milan Warmoeskerken
master : Kris Delacourt

License