QUADRON will be performing at Heaven on Tuesday 16th September. The lineup: Coco Maja Hastrup Karshøj (vocals) and Robin Braun (instruments, production) The background: Quadron have been going for a while, long enough to have accrued a reputation as the most famous band youve never heard of and earned the praise of, and tweets from, Adele, Prince, Jay-Z, James Murphy, Pharrell Williams, Kendrick Lamar and Tyler, the Creator. Lamar appears on the duos new album, Avalanche, while Quadrons singer has been in the studio with Pharrell and she recently made a cameo on Treehome95 from Tylers Wolf album. She and Tyler even performed a duet of the latter on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. Coco has the voice of an actual angel, declared Tyler. The music and production half of this LA-based Danish duo, Robin Braun (who operates as Robin Hannibal for no reason we can fathom), is also one half of Rhye, whom we wrote about last year when we made the mistake of assuming, from his purring, sultry tones, that his musical partner, Michael Milosh, was a woman (to add to the confusion, Rhyes debut album, issued this year, was entitled Woman). Coco Maja Hastrup Karshøj – who operates simply as Coco, for reasons we can fathom – is unmistakably female, although she used to sing Michael Jackson cover versions in an MJ tribute act. We should have supplied diagrams with todays column. A couple of the tracks on Avalanche have the airbrushed feel of a funk-lite midtempo ballad from Off the Wall or Thriller, bur a lot of the rest is slow, quiet-storm soul. LFT is R&P, a poppier variant on R&B weve just made up - its as bright and melodically breezy as Solange. Were not surprised its Tylers favourite track of 2013 – some of the music on Wolf comprises this sort of mellifluous jazz-funk. Better Off featuring Kendrick Lamar is breathy pop-soul; notwithstanding Braun/Hannibals leftfield credentials, this isnt the experimental R&B of Kelela et al, more like the sort of thing youd hear on side two of an old Ashanti album. Cocos voice is blank enough to work in a variety of contexts, so you can see why people want to work with her. Hey Love, due to be released in the UK as a single, is faster and belongs in Mayer Hawthorne/Robin Thicke polished blue-eyed R&B territory. On Crush, shes a dead ringer for Amy Winehouse, to the extent that it comes over like pastiche. But, unlike Winehouse, most of the time she doesnt sound remotely troubled, or at least, she chooses to hide her woes beneath a glossy, unperturbed veneer. No need to ask, shes a smooth operator. Tickets are still via Ticketweb ticketweb.co.uk/event/DOE1609?REFID=heaven_website&interface=heaven
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 10:58:13 +0000
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