- At some point during its 13-minute fumble through glassy keyboard glissandi, "KitKat Maze" enters a space that, alongside Art Alfie, has become a second home for Mr. Tophat in the last few years. Casual chatter and filtered kick drums bleed into a track caught between two worlds: the dance floor and its own thoughts. It's unclear whether this predates Karlovak, the label Mr. Tophat has run with Art Alifie since 2012, or is a subsequent decompression, since the tracks on A Memoir From The Youth Pt. 1—the first installment of a two-part, seven-track series—were produced between 2009 and 2016. The dance floor is in the periphery of "KitKat Maze," turning Karlovak's formula inside out.
Somewhere in A Memoir From The Youth Pt. 1 lives Sandro, a "made-up persona" of Mr. Tophat's with unclear intentions. (A text accompanying the release, written in the voice of Sandro, begins, "Express you. Expresso. Self. Selfo.") That sense of play figures in both "KitKat Maze" and "Kiss O Sandro," the latter of which is a shell of descending toms, harsh idiophonic sequences and an amorous robotic drawl. A Memoir From The Youth Pt. 1 invites us into a personal space we haven't seen before, and the oddness of the environment is absorbing. But penetrating the idiosyncrasies of "Kiss O Sandro" is made difficult by a confused internal logic. It's a conservative experiment: by not forming a reciprocal relationship with the tones around it, the percussion is only a cursory nod to DJs. Where "KitKat Maze" allowed itself to get lost, "Kiss O Sandro" seems unsure of whether it wants to make you dance or stare at your feet.
TracklistA Kiss O Sandro
B KitKat Maze