Part Deux – Joby Longyin (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Almost a year ago, I sat in this same chair, scratching my head and wracking my brain, trying to find the words that best encapsulate the eponymous album from Joby Longyin. And so, here I am once more with the next part of the sonic story, perfectly entitled Part Deux, and facing the same problem. Not that it is a particularly bad problem to have. After all, if music is going to head into strange, mercurial, and unknown places, the least you can do is let the pen follow it.

Joby Longyin works in an electronic world, but as an overall album theme or signature style, it is best not to try to define things any more rigidly than that, such is the pushing of boundaries and hopping of generic divides that he undertakes.

If the opener, “Swing Ming Yin,” is a strange sort of electro-jazz-dance groover complete with comedic breakdowns and surreal Christmas thanks, “A Common Circle” takes us into an ambient, cinematic world not far removed from a drifting Vangelis soundtrack.

And for every slow burning and brooding chillout number, such as the excellently named “Great Paper Cathedral Demise,” you find a high-octane clubland dancefloor filler in the form of “Old Skool Trifle Dance.”

A year on and eight new tracks, and what have we learned? Well, it is fair to say that Joby Longyin is as adventurous and experimental, humourous and harmonious, mellifluous and melodic, mercurial and marvellous, unique and sonically satisfying as ever. May he never change!