Kaye Loggins used to seem like she was in a hurry. Three of the four tracks on her second EP, 2011's GRN, were barely more than a minute long; the longest came in at 1:47. They were beautiful things—lustrous instrumental hip-hop jams full of fluttering chiptune frequencies—but they seemed to bear out Lao Tzu's (and Blade Runner's) dictum about flames that burn twice as bright. On the following year's BLK EP, the Atlanta native had no problem stretching out and developing her ideas to three- and four-minute lengths, but this time, her footwork- and skweee-inspired beats flew by so fast, it was as if a record pressed at 33 were being played back at 78.
On her self-titled debut album, she returns to Earth-time. Stylistically, most of the record's eight tracks follow the jazzy, broken-beat house of artists like Floating Points and Four Tet. Loggins is fond of synthesizers with a rough shine and drum grooves that fuse scratchy machine programming with fluid playing from her collaborators Avila Santo and Michael J. Thomas III. She's got a bricoleur's sensibility, too: "Works" fleshes out a shuffling disco groove with grinding metallic accents and a filigree of delay that recalls Manuel Göttsching's Balearic classic, "E2-E4"; in "Market Solution", the drum programming has a no-nonsense flair similar to Daphni's "Ye Ye", while the sine-wave bassline sounds, ever so faintly, like Vince Guaraldi covering "Sleng Teng".
But Loggins has her own voice, and one of the indicators is how naturally the whole thing flows. The opener, "Pneumatic for the People", is a dramatic scene-setter—bright keys, freeform soloing, rolling drum fills with lots of splash and ride cymbal—that seamlessly segues into "Works". There's something almost triumphant about the latter—it's radiant, giddy, some real standing-on-top-of-a-waterfall shit, right down to the rainbow-like spray of frequencies her keys give off. "Market Solution" sinks into a groove that's more efficient but just as ecstatic—get a load of those sampled yelps and glistening arpeggios—and then she dials it back a notch with "Median", a beatific organ piece that sounds like a bedroom producer's response to Steve Reich or Terry Riley.
On an album of highlights, "Cole Dub" is the biggest moment—a thumping, glowing, full-band house number full of jazzy Rhodes riffing, live percussion, and dubbed-out saxophone (courtesy Sonnymoon's Dane Orr) that's as sunny as tape can handle without melting from the heat. Even Loggins seems to know that it's all downhill from there: "Rag" is a straight-ahead dancefloor track, and the ambient "Castle" brings everything to a close with sunrise synths and understated grace.
Well, almost. There's one more song, "Tophat", an eight-minute bass-and-drums jam—a coda, more than anything. But it feels deserved. The album's biggest shift from Time Wharp's previous work is the confidence she shows in letting her songs develop at a relaxed pace. After a set as effortless and joyful as this, it's natural to want one last dance.
