- Tony Williams' debut Addison Groove album earlier this year showed him slowing his frenetic footwork down a bit, a formula that worked as often as it didn't. He returns half a year later with a four-tracker that sounds like it was birthed from the same sessions, but mostly lacking Transistor Rhythm's growing pains.
"I Go Boom" might just be the biggest Addison Groove track yet. On the surface it's another cookie-cutter exercise—repeated vocal sample, simmering organs, horn stabs—but everything lands with such gracefully flowing force it's like a mushroom cloud rendered in wispy vapour trails. It, uh, really goes boom. Everything else on Adventures in Rainbow Country is inflated to the same monolithic scale, classic ghettotech and electro turned into a caricature. The constantly descending synths of "Button Moon" wouldn't sound out of place on Mad Decent, and the whimsical "Oversize Clip" has taunting arpeggios that spiral like video game jingles. From those descriptions, these tracks should sound downright silly, but they're presented with unusual and unwavering, pulverizing force. The odd one out on the EP is "Melody Maker," which never quite congeals into more than the sum of its parts. Luckily for him, the other three are his most seamless Frankenstein jobs yet.
Tracklist A1 I Go Boom
A2 Button Moon
B1 Oversize Clip
B2 Melody Maker