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Radio Citizen is the moniker of Berliner Niko Schabel. On this, his debut album, he mixes up crock pot-heated grooves with a smorgasbord of textures and sounds. It’s a trippy excursion, with urban rhythms and retro sounds abounding. Schabel thrives on creating gyrating soundscapes, tossing various elements together and infusing them at times with 1960s-esque poetry, boogaloo beats and instrumentation. Distorted Hammond B3 organs, boomy double basses, rough-hewn sounding drums, street-recorded ramblings, and more are all mixed in. Schabel is a producer with uncanny skill at creating aural illusions: some of the studio-sounding tracks are mostly live recordings, while what sounds like an in-concert piece may be entirely cut & pasted digitally. Like other mostly electronic albums, most songs are dance-oriented rather than exploring musical themes and variations. Still, this is far more imaginative material than what’s heard on most urban American radio stations these days.
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