Night Passengers - Find A Way (2022)

Italian duo Night Passengers aka Nicola Loporchio and Emanuele Del Carmine serve up their first collaborative album this summer. Find A Way comes on Born just a year or so after the project was spontaneously formed during lockdown, and is a seamless nine-track instrumental fusion of soul, jazz, funk, breaks and 80s grooves.

Nicola Loporchio is also known as Nico Lahs and Cosmic Garden and is a producer with more than a decade's experience. In that time he has landed on countless influential labels with a range of EPs and EPs that take in everything from downtempo to deep house, hip hop to funk. During the lockdowns of 2020, he hooked up with fellow Italian musician Emanuele Del Carmine who has served up some fresh disco sounds in the last couple of years. They began jamming together in early 2021 and soon found they shared common ideas when it came to good time grooves. Now, that plays out across a proper full-length that is perfect for close home listening and laid back Sundays, but always with one eye on a cosy and intimate dancefloor.

This most cohesive of works opens with the joyous keys of 'Moonlight Sonata' which sets an immediately romantic mood. 'Illusion' is then a golden bit of jazz-funk with warm, glowing chords and dusty broken beats that make you want to shuffle. 'Wandering' is another piece of
fine musicianship with perfect interplay between the live drums, jazzy keys and cosmic leads. The title track then slows things down. It's deep, spacious and atmospheric with suggestive bass, pillowy chords and distant melodies twinkling like stars in a night sky.

'Escape On A Sunny Sunday' has a lush retro-future feel, with freeform keys racing about the scales as the cosmic leads and tight drums tie the whole track together. During 'Moments Of Insanity,' the album launches further into the cosmos on waves of radiant melody and splashy cymbals. 'Past Memories' taps into 80s nostalgia with more blurry-edged chords and natty synth sequences riding on louche drums. The heady 'On A Cloud' is a go-slow piece that invites you into a seductive jazz-funk dreamworld and lastly, Brazilian Zopelar remixes 'Illusion' into a tumbling bit of boogie-tinged house funk.

Find A Way is a vibrant work from seasoned musicians whose virtuoso playing brings every track to life in a heartwarming fashion.