Rivea Corymbosa

The musical world conjured up on Italian DJ/producer duo Giorgio Girl and Marco Lentano’s second album is a heavy, languid, smokey, narcotic fusion of seventies blaxploitation soundtracks, psychedelic jazz rock and atmospheric downtempo sample-funk. It’s mostly instrumental with various flutes, woodwind, steel guitars and Rhodes along with layers of gently percolating congas, batá, claves, bongos and shakers tied together with synth washes, field recordings and electronic FX. At times the tracks sound like lost South American funk 7”s before turning into something much more contemporary via some studio trickery, resulting in a very pleasing sense of musical-time-confusion, and tracks that are simultaneously nostalgic and familiar yet also novel and unexpected. Finishing on the epically elongated psychoactive slo-mo funk of Dubby Bolas that meanders through its near-ten minutes way via a stack of interlinking pulsing and throbbing ambient-style synths, library music modular leads and veils of reverb, delay and studio dub trickery, Rivea Corymbosa is a deep, soothing and enticing album that manages to be both dreamily relaxed and head-noddingly funky at the same time.