Nicky Benedek and Alex Talan from Los Angeles may not live in the past, but you can bet they have vacation homes there. Benedek—who in 2011 cited Zapp and Roger Troutman as influences, making him one of the most informed students in the history of higher education—began making sleek, '80s-inspired boogie that sounded like it had been from the tape deck of a vintage lowrider (another major influence: West Coast G-funk). When he graduated to a broader fusion of R&B, new age, freestyle and deep house, Benedek's music remained steeped in analog warmth and tapes. Talan, aka Coolwater, has shown similar cage-digging instincts on the NTS show Cool World West, favoring artists such as Joe Zawinul, Bill Laswell, Haruomi Hosono, but also Talan's late father, a director and bedroom synthesizer player. Coolwater's 2020 self-titled debut EP sounds like a distillation of all these influences, a kind of LA jazz noir with Blade Runner soul. In the new trio Total Blue, which includes their friend Anthony Calonico, they turn down the lights and offer an even more mesmerizing simulation of outsider jazz and the big budget new era.
The three musicians previously worked together on the Coolwater EP, which in retrospect feels like a test run for Total Blue. Their debut album takes similar sounds and influences – frenzied bass, muted trumpet, gratings of outboard effects – and distills them into a dreamier, more ethereal fusion. “The Path” opens the record on a water scene: A liquid electric bass melody glistens like oily water under the docks. a soft marimba beat beats like rigging on the masts of sailing ships. It's rich in color, a feast of augmented chords and seared accidentals. halfway through, a strong brass-synth melody takes the song into swift-jazz logic. “Corsair” takes on both a nautical metaphor and a retro sensibility: Everything from the flanged guitar to the LinnDrum hits seem designed to evoke a certain era and spirit of digital jazz production. Back in its heyday, it was an expensive sound to produce. Total Blue pays homage to those studio bills of yesteryear with sumptuous chords and arrangements that sound like a million bucks.
If you didn't know the background, it would be easy to assume from the album's glittery sheen that it was a reissue of an 80s new age relic. Even the evocative, globalized titles sound like something out of a Windham Hill or Private Music laserdisc: “Heart of the World,” “Chaparral,” “Jaguarundi.” It's not just the sound design that feels rich. So do the songs themselves, which stretch out with an almost exaggerated sense of leisure, bass glissandos and ersatz reeds mirroring each other in slow, sensuous movements. No matter how many times I've heard it, every time the trio turns to a particularly juicy chord, it's like triple cherries coming out of the slot.
