By Corey Vikser
Staff Writer
New album ‘Palmbomen II’ guides listeners on a cloud trip throughout a retro, synthy callback to sci-fi soundtracks.
On new album Palmbomen II, producer Kai Hugo employs a lo-fi minimalist style for his tracks resulting in a unique, dreamlike aesthetic. Fans craving the complex productions from his previous album are in for a disappointment, as “Palmbomen II” resembles like a film score far more than an album.
Kai Hugo is a European producer who goes by the stage moniker Palmbomen. In 2013, he released his debut album, ‘Night Fly Europa’ to glowing reviews and praise for his unique, psychedelic style. Hugo then moved out to Los Angeles and began pursuing other artistic ventures like film scoring. His second release is titled ‘Palmbomen II’ in reference to the progression in his style and absence of a live band.
The tracks are unified by a surreal, spacious aesthetic that is reminiscent of 80s synthesizer soundtracks. The heavy use of echo effects and nature samples in the tracks give them a surrealistic atmosphere. The otherworldly aesthetic emulated crafts the album into much more of a cohesive experience. Each track feels like it explores a different area of the world Hugo has crafted, matching typical score conventions with otherworldly samples and synths.
Kai uses the limitations of minimalist style to his advantage, utilizing a similar drum and rhythm structure for each song but using a heavily diverse collection of drums and synths to distinguish them. Tracks “Mary Louise Lefante” and “John Lee Roche” are extremely similar but “Lefante”s drums are disco-oriented whilst “Roche” occupies a more tribal sound.
Compared to the dense arrangements on his debut, the beat heres are much more simple, focusing on drum and rhythm patterns. This is a degradation of style for the artist as his biggest strength was the unique, psychedelic sound which is stripped in place of a house aesthetic.
The downside of adapting such a minimalist structure for an album is the risk of repetition. The heavy, complex beats of Hugo’s debut album ‘Night Fly Europa’ are missing as the songs feel like a stripped component of the sound he was made famous for. The simple structures in the songs grow very repetitive as the album progresses. Tracks like “Samuel Aboah” suffer from this as they feature very promising build-ups, but fail to evolve as they are continuously looped. The live instrumentation of ”‘Europa” is missing, resulting in much less complex productions.
Although he completely abandoned his signature style, Kai Hugo has crafted another impressive release with Palmbomen II as he creates relaxing, nostalgic tracks dedicated to the era of 90’s sci fi.
Palmbomen II is now out on Beats in Space records, available digitally and in retail for $16.
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