K-Conjog: Magic Spooky Ears
Schole
Having issued albums and EPs on a number of labels since 2004 (Abandon Building Records and Bad Panda among them), Fabrizio Somma now brings his K-Conjog project to an impressively high level of refinement on his latest full-length. In that regard, Magic Spooky Ears could be seen as the culmination of fourteen years of multi-directional music explorations, with Somma's talents crystallizing into a forty-eight-minute, state-of-the-art presentation of electronic songcraft. Darkwave, electronica, pop, dance music, and even shoegaze emerge as reference points in a collection featuring both instrumental and vocal cuts (an African music influence also surfaces during “Love Walks on Unexpected Ways”).
Synthesizers, ambient textures, and muscular beats figure prominently in Somma's melody-rich songs, most of which hover in the five-minute range. Acoustic and electronic sounds sit comfortably side-by-side, with acoustic guitars and synth bass lines giving a high-energy track such as “What Begin Began” drive. Stylistically Magic Spooky Ears isn't shoegaze, but it shares with the genre its predilection for epic, widescreen production, and while it's not formally speaking dance music either, the punchy, kick-drum swing driving “Millennials Otters” lends the track an enticing club quality; the album's high-gloss synthetic gleam and sparkle, on the other hand, suggests connections not only to electronica but chillwave and dreampop, too.
Magic Spooky Ears is at its best in two vocal songs, “Same Old Grace,” marked by a rather John Cale-like lead and powered by a dramatic, drums-pounding arrangement, and “Monotone,” a brooding darkwave exercise one imagines would make Depeche Mode envious were the band to hear it; its throbbing pulse and haunting vocal melody help make the cut arguably the album's strongest track. Admittedly, the release isn't as representative of Schole as others in its catalogue, the Japanese label generally tending to concentrate on music of a pastoral folk or neo-classical kind than epic electropop of the kind presented on Magic Spooky Ears. It does, however, share with its Schole brethren one thing in particular: a high level of polish. Production values are strong, and Somma's songs impress as fully realized, multi-tiered creations crafted with obvious care and consummate attention to detail.December 2018