(2023) Robbie & Mona - Tusky

Review:
Robbie & Mona’s new album begins how others might choose to end theirs: with a grand, twinkling slow dance. ‘Sensation’ is cavernous and conclusive, its emotions drained and gathering in pools on the floor. It’s with this sense of fatal melodrama and exquisite spectacle that Bristol-hailing duo William Carkeet and Ellie Gray ground their operations. Embracing the grandeur of cinema (William has a side line in film soundtracks), ‘Tusky’ provides an ornate and engrossing listen of ambitious proportions. At one moment, it’s flaunting a candlelit romance of sweaty-hot saxophones and upright pianos as on the waltzing swing- jazz of ‘Flauneral’. Next, we’re served up coldly programmed synth-pop futurisms - check the overwhelming crystalline purity of ‘Sherry Prada’, or the shimmering dream-raves of ‘Clapback’. Then there are disorientating moments where ‘Tusky’ tosses us side-to-side between aesthetic extremes: ‘Dolphin’ serenades with a cathedral choir before an onslaught of extreme electronic abrasions subverts the elegant and glitches the beautiful. As intimate and sultry as a slow wet kiss, yet as cool, and expansive as a starlit sky, Robbie & Mona have crafted a remarkable, multi-edged record that twists, turns and simply delights with the sheer breadth of its creative vision. — diymag

Track List:
01 - Sensation
02 - Flaneural
03 - Sherry Prada
04 - Tina's Leather
05 - Wenders
06 - Clapback
07 - Dolphin
08 - Mildred
09 - Always Gonna Be a Dead Man


Media Report:
Genre: art pop, dream-pop
Country: Bristol, UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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