Island

There are few albums as explicitly Balearic as this. The title, the lizard on the cover, every sound herein explicitly signals Ibiza — the Ibiza away from the megaclubs, that is. Manchester producer Ruf Dug has been a part time resident on “the white isle” since his teens, and his music is all about capturing the hidden away pleasures of its bars and fish shacks. And in particular he’s always channelled the pop immediacy of the Balearic DJs — so here, even when there are oddball radiophonic sounds, dub reggae spaciousness or Kosmische synth repetitions, it always comes with a cleanliness of production and melodic hooks that you’d swear you’d heard before — that trigger a bittersweet non-specific nostalgia. And when the folky soft-rock vocals of Nev Cottee come in on “Dominica!” and “Le Rayon Vert,” you’d swear you were hearing a song from your childhood echoing in on a lost oldies station of the mind.