FaltyDL, aka New York producer Drew Lustman, is good at calling it. His last full-length, 2011's You Stand Uncertain was exactly that. While there were flickers of sure blue sky, most notably on "Waited Patiently", for the most part it remained thick with ambivalent cloud, caught somewhere in between. Not that in-between is a bad place to be per se, as Lustman knows its fertile possibilities better than most. He's made a career out of flitting between house and garage, flirting with dub and techno, frequently led by his searching, experimental jazz background-- he was reared on Miles Davis and played in a jazz quartet as a teenager.
With new album, Hardcourage, Lustman's called it again. It maps his journey from uncertainty to confidence, toward music that reaches outward rather than inward; those two words pushed together as if to boldly ring the fact that facing your fears is no walk in the park. On Hardcourage, it appears he's worked hard to loosen his thrall to jazz-like introspection-- something that often eclipsed his earlier work-- in favor of a newfound openness. And what's come with that hard-won courage is a sense of fun. This is a sure-footed, big-hearted record; one that twirls and spins and delights in itself.
From the opening tiptoeing robot tones of "Stay I'm Changed", a playfulness runs through Hardcourage: it wiggles in the winking funk of "Straight & Arrow", belly-laughs at the parrot-like squawk that swoops through the low-end jungle of "Korben Dallas", and leaps on the tap-dancing keys-- all lit up like that scene in Big-- of choral-infused, dub ballad "Re Assimilate". "She Sleeps" ia a joy-filled shuffling house number that's as close to pop as Lustman's ever got, thanks to Friendly Fires frontman Ed Macfarlane's vocal turn. It's refreshing to hear a male voice emoting over Lustman's beats for once, rather than abstract fragments of female singing.
While Lustman has indicated that this is an album born in part from a new relationship (the two faces that adorn the front and back of the album artwork confirm it), Hardcourage also reads like loving dialogue with his contemporaries over in the UK: Floating Points, Four Tet, and Gold Panda (the latter two have both contributed remixes to this record). Like Lustman, these are artists who have long drawn their strength from deep within the Venn diagram that is the UK electronic music scene.
So we have the blooming "Uncea", a carnival of soft synths bursting forth, tripping over finger clicks and melting into a gossamer dream of a house track. Evoking fond memories of DJ Rolando's Los Hermanos side project, "For Karme" moves into melodic techno territory with its click-click-whirring cog-like snares that fall back to let the keys breathe. That breathing space is crucial to the strength of Hardcourage. Where his jazz instinct had, in the past, led to the construction of immersive grooves that drown thought in feeling, the two live side by side on Hardcourage, and that's largely down to the generous sense of space. Percussive elements are allowed to stand alone, savored for their own intrinsic merit.
As if to highlight his progress, next come a pair of tracks that would have sounded at home on any of his previous records: "Finally Some Shit / The Rain Stopped" with its looping, wooden shaker groove, and "Kenny Rolls One" which, as indicated by the title, does get a little lost in its own moment of focused distraction, throwing up a number of threads that never really come together. But then "Korben Dallas" snaps into view and we're back in the room: a sharp, mischievous track that dances knowingly into noise techno's shade.
Hardcourage's crowning glory, and it knows it, is "Bells": its titular chimes part for soaring saxophone wails, wistful harmonica chirps, and babbling glockenspiel bubbles, and all seems right in the world. Lustman steers clear of turning saccharine, however, avoiding the obvious with his trademark teasing approach to pace; that push/pull thing, where you think the track's going one way but-- oh!-- it's actually skipping over there. It sounds like like a lot of learning and a lot of loving went into this album, and the result is FaltyDL at his most open. In the past his fluidity has been presented as growing pains, but now it only feels prophetic: This is what we once called electronica all grown up, unafraid to go wherever its heart takes it.
