Mantra Moderne, the debut album from London based duo Kit Sebastian, (out today) is a hipster's pipedream. Appearing as if assimilated from the record collections of the cooler than thou set, you can do little better than quote from their press release to sum up what's going on here: 'a stunning contemporary masterpiece that fuses Anatolian Psychedelia , Brazilian Tropicalia, 60s European pop and American jazz. A must for fans of Khruangbin, Portishead, Arthur Verocai, Goat, Caetana Veloso, Tom Ze, Os Mutantes, Cortes and co.'
So, that lot. It seems there's not a box on the hipper than hip checklist that's not ticked. The blurb above serves well anyhow to describe what the record itself sounds like. The soundtrack for an exclusive party thrown by Stereolab and Charlotte Gainsbourg for their cool mates. Mantra Moderne positively floats with upwardly mobile aspiration, and will doubtless be on the player at Rough Trade Shops up and down the land for weeks.
It's quite immaculately done, groovy global cherry picking of the most tasteful kind imaginable. The Kit Sebastian pair, Kit Martin and Merve Erdem shed and slip on outfits from track to track and as if by magic the listener finds themselves by turn on dancefloors in Rio, New York, London, Paris, Istanbul and Mumbai. It's all just seamless.
Frankly, Kit Sebastian never put a foot wrong. Taken on its own terms, Mantra Moderne is pretty much a perfect record. In some respects it feels like a companion piece to Vanishing Twin's wonderful The Age of Immunology, released a few weeks back, which mines similar terrain. If anything this a more cerebral operation than that one, you'll do well to detect much human heart in operation but it's certainly clinical, and very, very cool.
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