Roger Robinson Summer / Feel Bad Smile

Roger Robinson (King Midas Sound, Black Space Quartet) delivers 2 standalone sides of haunted soul over instrumentals from Jabu’s Amos Childs. Described by Roger as an imaginary soundtrack to a long escalator ride downwards to a Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibition - ‘the music that might be playing as you tried your best to avoid everyone else’s eyes’. A bruised take on Muzak, ‘a sadder kind of normal’. Roger’s innate understanding of form and melody manages to somehow pull real ear worm pop hooks out of the lilting backing of ground hum and hiss from the mixing desk, his falsetto bringing to mind everything from early Sade demos through to lovers rock. On the A side Summer sees Roger yearning for warmer days, over an other-worldly drums machine workout before collapsing in on itself in a disco mix / funeral coda outro. On the flip side the instrumental is pared back even further to a crawling slo motion piano and the sound of faders crackling turned to 11, Roger dials the emotions up another notch, channelling ghosts of low rider soul and entering into ice cold slow jam / ballad territory. Essential late winter / early spring listening for lonely late nite laundrette trips and dawn cigarettes in the graveyard.