BOY

Better known as RAC, André Allen Anjos has built a solid reputation in mainstream remixing – Lana Del Rey, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Weezer, Foster the People, Phoenix, Bob Marley, Imagine Dragons, New Order, Two Door Cinema Club, The Shins. BOY is not a remix album, but an ambitious project of 18 indie-pop and indietronic tracks concocted with today’s tools – software, digital gear, analog synths, electronic percussion, guitars, vocals. The songs explore the seemingly complicated childhood of their Portuguese creator (transplanted to Oregon), who seems to want to draw up a poetic assessment of it. On the other hand, the music and lyrics on the programme aren’t very complex; harmonic structures, melodic hooks, rhythms and vocals subscribe to the rules of pop culture. The interplay of the various influences (house, post-punk, neo-soul, neo-funk, pop FM, electro-pop, etc.) is worthy of interest because the producer’s paw remains identifiable from beginning to end. Among the 14 singers invited to sing his melodic lines are the American goth rocker Tropic, English neo-soul singer Jamie Lidell, South Africa’s St. Lucia, and California’s LeyeT.  Unpretentious, efficient, tasteful and… These circumspect coatings transform the contents to an extent, but we can already identify the new standards of mass marketing here.