- It's been a year and a half since the last EP from Canblaster, a former video game soundtrack composer and current member of Paris's Club Cheval collective. His newest offering is a six-track collaboration with the Norwegian producer Lido for Pelican Fly, a Belgian label that's released music from artists like Sinjin Hawke and Cashmere Cat. The Superspeed EP features many Canblaster hallmarks: a high-strung theatricality, humorous pop tropes and a tendency towards twists and turns, which make his music feel fast-paced but not scatter-brained.
The sound design is masterly throughout—as we've come to expect from Canblaster. You can hear how his years spent composing video game soundtracks have shaped his sound. The strength of the record is its combination of pop caliber production and a knack for songwriting, which shines through in the sophisticated phrasing and cadences of "Rush Hour" and the EP's opening track, "6:59 AM," an appropriately over-the-top prelude. Beyond its technical elements, Superspeed has a light conceptual side, with poignant but not overbearing references to millennial pop culture.
The standout title track sounds like an homage to the late period of UK garage—the age of Daniel Bedingfield and Artful Dodger—when the sound bubbled over into big-budget radio tracks. The EP's weakest moments sounds more like Lido and less like Canblaster, with occasional forays into the more formulaic alt-R&B remix sound on tracks like "Alarm Clock" or "Hyperspeed," which sounds like Cashmere Cat but with a slightly more abstract bent. Overall, however, it's refreshing to hear two producers persevering within the liminal zone between hip-hop, club and bass music, while skirting the clichés that mark many similar projects.
Tracklist01. 06:59 AM
02. Alarm Clock
03. Rush Hour
04. Superspeed
05. Hyperspeed
06. Too Late !