When King Britt's Presents Fhloston Paradigm first appeared on Hyperdub in 2012, it seemed a fairly gritty offering from a producer known mostly for emotive house. But the Philadelphia-born DJ, who got his start touring with Digable Planets, is also something of a shapeshifter: with his “King Britt Presents…” projects, he’s shuffled through a number of styles with seemingly unstoppable energy—he’s mixed classic disco-funk with jazzy chill-out textures under the name Sylk 130; another project consisted entirely of re-mixed vocals from New Orleans gospel singer Sister Gertrude Morgan. One of the threads through this eclectic catalogue is an underlying Afrocentrism; another is Britt’s studied approach to meticulous genre emulation.
His new album, which sees Britt assuming the name Fhloston Paradigm as a full-on alias, revisits and fleshes out the same territory as the EP, which functioned as a kind of alternate soundtrack to Luc Besson’s pop-art sci-fi flick The Fifth Element (the name Fhloston Paradigm itself originated with “Fhloston Paradise,” the futuristic resort Bruce Willis’ character visits in the film.) It’s a concept that recalls not only the Afrofuturist tendencies of early techno, but the heady positivity of '90s pop culture, when science fiction trafficked more in sensory manipulation than dystopian paranoia. Britt carries it off with a sonic precision that can be dazzling, but at times strays into territory that feels blinkered by nostalgia.
The menacing, back-to-basics EP cut “Chasing Rainbows” reappears, and its slowly downshifting melody remains the most memorable earworm here. The rest of The Phoenix distances itself from the gear-grinding analog techno of the EP, applying that track’s mutant-pop gravitas as a schematic for something more dramatic. The production sounds more expensive, and the arrangements more elaborate, with six of the tracks featuring guest vocalists.
As a producer, Britt is in fine form here, and listening to the album on a good pair of headphones reveals truly beautiful details—the expressive drumming on “Letters of Past”, the subtle, woozy dissonance that emerges from the immersive clouds of album closer “Light on Edge”. Surprisingly, Britt’s melodic sense is easier to appreciate on the fully instrumental tracks—see the icy synth lines on the dizzying “Race to the Moon”, an early highlight. By contrast, the sung melodies sound simplistic, and when there are discernible lyrics, they’re more distracting than atmospheric. It’s hard to hear Natasha Kmeto’s appearance on “Light on Edge” without thinking of Fhloston Paradigm’s fantastic, seductive remix of her track “Deeply”, which saw him embellishing around a straightforward vocal line to hypnotic effect.
The pinnacle of the album comes on the nine-minute title track, its mutating rumble of drums and ominous chords anchoring a teased-out jumble of synth notes that eventually emerges as a bee-sting-precise melody. There’s nothing more absorbing on the album, or sweeter on the ears. It’s a massive-sounding elaboration on burnt-out techno, and inventive enough to explain why a somewhat backward-looking project would find a home on Hyperdub, a label that’s always seeking to push dance music into the future.
Unfortunately, the rest of The Phoenix has a tendency towards the anodyne, a flaw that lies more in the languorous composition than the execution. “Tension Remains”, which features operatic vocals from Pia Ercole, sounds like a fairly explicit call-back to Besson’s famous blue-skinned diva, but The Phoenix lacks the narrative quality to make it anything more than an amusing reference. The album is also an hour long—short by film score standards, but for an album with several leisurely ambient stretches, it’s a commitment to sit through. Fhloston Paradigm’s continued association with The Fifth Element makes sense: that film’s vision of the future was more concerned with the surface-level pleasures of gaudy costumes and kinetic choreography than developing a deeper subtext. The Phoenix is a similar beast, simultaneously muscular and fluffy, a well-polished album that sometimes feels perplexingly one-dimensional.
