Hague-based producer Legowelt's Discogs page lists 24 different aliases, not including his recent, productive collaboration with San Francisco's Xosar as Trackman Lafonte and Bonquiqui. Last year, he gave away The Teac Life, an album longer and almost exactly as good as The Paranormal Soul, for free. Danny Wolfers' output is vast, so I'll let him sum it up: "[P]eople like melodies, so why not make them?" The album's seamless blend of dance paradigms-- house, techno, electro-- mean that the melodies, which Legowelt draws into orbit out of mostly vintage gear, are on full display.
Despite the commitment to analog equipment, Legowelt doesn't make vintage music. Wolfers' sound is explicitly modern, in that it's not just the product of someone using Juno synthesizers and TR drum machines; it's the product of someone who has developed a time-tested mastery over them, who has benefitted from the learning of others. The Paranormal Soul is so seamless, so clean and wizard-ly that it illuminates the paradox at the center of Legowelt's work. He releases so much material, through so many outlets, that all the negative connotations of machine music start to bubble up: generative, automatic, easy. On the other hand, Legowelt's recordings are masterful, and his arrangements are more complex than those of (many of) his peers. If what Legowelt does is easy, everyone would sound as good as he does.
Legowelt's recordings weren't always this way. At the beginning of the last decade, his tracks were comprised of short, staccato bursts of sound. His lone recording for Germany's Cocoon label, "Disco Rout", was a dance hit in 2002. This is, presumably, where Legowelt acquired the "lo-fi house" tag that continues to stick to him to this day. It's a red herring now, as Legowelt has grown more skillful, to the point where listening to Soul can be like reading a letter from someone with exquisite penmanship. A long letter: Soul clocks in at over an hour, chock full of five- and six-minute blasts of warm bass and tip-toeing sequencers. It is the other side of the coin that is Legowelt's amazing productivity: he's a shitty self-editor, or at least he has no interest in being a good one.
Tracks like the anthemic "I Only Move for U" or the cinematic "Transformation of the Universe" would drop like bombs as 12"s, but they get lost in the thicket of synthesizers. The 12 tracks on Soul have similar tempos, tone, and duration; Legowelt pulls off the difficult feat of numbing the listener with quality, of obscuring his personality with his craft. The Teac Life traded on this effect for its hazy, forested atmosphere. Soul is clearer, more of a party album-- see those jackin' vocal samples on "Clap Yo Hands" or the acid that bubbles over during "Voice of Triumph"-- so it can't skate by on obscurity.
And it doesn't, for the most part. If Soul somehow feels like less than the sum of its parts, that doesn't detract that the parts themselves are shiny, sleek little things. Tracks like "Rave Till Dawn" and "Renegade of a New Age" are fully formed bangers. Legowelt creates limber, beautiful dance music even if he's a little clumsy when it comes to creating limber, beautiful dance albums. This is probably the price you pay to wrap yourself in craft and process; it's doubtful Legowelt thinks much of it.
