Mickey Pearce - One Hundred Smiles (2018)

Mickey Pearce resets his style slower, kinkier, and more spaced out, with excellent, far-flung vocals by Lena Platonos, Meuko Meuko!, and Poté laced in among his characteristic quirks and playful twists...

“Mickey Pearce is back in business with ‘One Hundred Smiles’, a new album of swaggering UK club music experimentations, and a new label Box Of Toys.

His first album, ‘Michael’ (2016), saw him exploring new territory; crafting a strange and melancholic landscape of beatless textures and leftfield house and techno. Approached with a fresh perspective, ‘One Hundred Smiles’ slows the tempo and ups the collaboration.

“The last record was a reflection of my situation around that time. This one is like stepping out from under a cloud. It’s about the joy of collaboration; meeting and working with new people. It’s also about the ambiguity of smiles, and the complicated relationships we form.”

The album features appearances from rising UK talent Poté, Taiwanese vocalist Meuko Meuko and Greek electronic pioneer Lena Platonos. “Poté is a crazy talent. We’ve done a bunch of sessions and made a load of tracks, two of which ended up here and one of which is going on his next record. Meuko Meuko is an artist from Taiwan. We communicate entirely via Instagram. She’d send me translations of the lyrics in Instagram messages, but I’m still not sure if I’ve chopped them into any sort of sense. The instrumental was called ‘Slime’, and she misread that intentionally or unintentionally to mean “smile” and sent me all these crazy lines about “your lovely smile” and it was just perfect. I love her. Lena Platonos is a legend, and someone I was honoured to work with. The day she told me she had been playing and enjoying the record around her friends was a good day.”

‘One Hundred Smiles’ is the first release on his own label Box Of Toys. The label is named the same as his 2017-2018 radio show series, which featured the album’s guests as well as Randomer, Machine Woman, Airhead, The Maghreban and Object Blue.”