Becker & Mukai - Time Very Near (2020)

Debut album from super-project feat. members of Floating Points live band, Zongamin, Vanishing Twin, Lux Prima, JeanGa And George. Parisian cinema composer Jean-Gabriel Becker is best known for idiosyncratic soundscapes, has worked alongside Massive Attack on acclaimed film soundtracks and recorded with John Foxx. Susumu Mukai, originally from Osaka, Japan, is one of London’s most sought after musicians, whose list of collaborators includes Floating Points, Vanishing Twin, Alexis Taylor and Fimber Bravo. Together they’ve created fresh new music that floats effortlessly above traditional genre delineation, with a dubbed-out and experimental melange of modern acid house, post punk, global grooves and clattering beats. Becker and Mukai began when the pair held jams in an underground studio / den in Shoreditch around 2017. Beginning as exploratory and spontaneous, these improv sessions evolved as the duo found their own blend, which came to combine Tunisian saxophones and West- African shakers with FM synthesisers and Eventide harmonizers. Their first recordings were unveiled in 2018 on the artfully unusual and vivacious Eyes EP, which gained support from Love Vinyl, who included it in their best-of-year list, NTS, who played it on repeat, and Andrew Weatherall and JD Twitch(Optimo),who provided further rotation. Released earlier this year, a collaborative EP of space-disco-meets-experimental-electronics called Auf Togo meets Becker and Mukai moved in a dance orientated direction, and was championed by Dublab in California and Sonar Kollektiv in Berlin, amongst others. Still not complying to genres,Time Very Near is their tentacular new album, which gathers sounds and inspiration from an ever-expanding palette of influences, assembled into something amorphously intangible that’s simultaneously refreshing and sharp, meandering and cosmic, futuristic but timelessly vintage.