LA’s Friends of Friends has largely kept its stable to local artists, and its core California constituents-- Shlohmo, Salva, Groundislava-- have carved out their own distinctive corner of the hip-hop influenced electronic music world. But last year, the label added a release by Danish house producer Tomas Barfod to its catalog, and 2013’s Show Me The Future compilations have seen Friends Of Friends expand outward in pretty much every geographical direction. Berlin-based Australian Kyson-- aka Jiam Kellet-Liew-- is their latest full signing. Liew's debut album The Water’s Way has an exotic but familiar feel to it, like the label's gone on vacation down under to find music that hews close to their established style but with a whole new set of sounds and ideas.
Liew's work owes as much as to the more mawkish aspects of trip-hop and chillout as it does to, say, Shlohmo’s scorched naturescapes, and like that producer, he likes to blend more acoustic sounds with implacable electronic ones. Opener “We’ve Been Inside For Too Long” is a good barometer for the whole record; there’s no denying the appeal of its lapping ebb and flow, but the pseudo-operatic vocal samples and world music touches could push it over the edge for some. Most of The Water’s Way has that same formula, piling a bevy of sound effects and Orientalist-style instruments on gentle beats that are more anchoring than assertive. There are exceptions; “No Such Thing As Me” rides a slow-motion gallop to its climax, while the jumble of “My Mother’s Eyes” recalls the early work of the percussion-obsessed Shigeto.
If a sickly sweet sentimentality is at the heart of Liew's style, it can work in his favor just as often as it works against him. “She Said To Me Quietly” and “How Long” both have unapologetically huge build-ups based off of driving melodies, where he pours his energy into driving the tracks forward rather than dressing them up with ornate accoutrements. The way the central synth motif on “How Long” swells and eclipses everything else is downright thrilling on such a passive record-- it smoulders and overtakes like it’s trying to run the rest of the track into the ground, a perfect centerpiece that keeps The Water’s Way from wafting away on its own pleasant breeze.
Though a few of the tracks mold sampled vocals into Balam Acab-inspired cipher operas, Liew separates himself from so many producers dealing with the same self-consciously pretty sounds by sticking mainly to his own voice. And while he’s not writing full-on verse-chorus-verse songs here, these lead lines tend to give each track an indie-friendly structure, something to follow along amidst all the wave-your-lighters-in-the-air swaying. There’s a polished, almost Coldplay-esque sheen to his voice which could, again, turn potential listeners off: the chopped-up croon of “My Mother’s Eyes” definitely errs on the wrong side of maudlin, but on “Missing Things” he moves closer to James Blake’s white boy soul.
Like a good portion of the Friends Of Friends discography, The Water’s Way is most concerned with cultivating its constant state of atmospheric beauty. It’s not always entirely clear what the record is trying to be-- there’s a big gulf between the delicately drifting opener and the straightforward and woodsy folk of closer “Shadows Cross”-- but it strikes a fine middle ground anyways. There's a little bit of newcomer syndrome when it comes to setting himself apart from the pack, and his debut turns out to be a fine attempt that sometimes gets bogged down in its own heart-on-sleeve emotionality. But Kyson has the tools and the talent to dig himself out, and if nothing else The Water's Way reveals a promising addition to an already overcrowded sector of electronic music.
