Maya Jane Coles – Comfort

The deepest of debut journeys...

With its gently lilting title-track kicking off this deepest of journeys, Maya Jane Coles propels us into her obsessively quilled house music odyssey.

The 25-year-old producer provides us with many guides, with whom we can traverse her expansive vision of club grooves – and it’s a roll call that’d have Homer choking on his mead.

Hercules And Love Affair’s Kim Ann Foxman, Bristol’s underworldly Tricky, the Nordic lyrical shards of Karin Park, the Alpine caress of Catherine Pockson, and the frosty French touch of Miss Kittin: all lay down vocal licks which are tethered together in tone and delivery.

Maya even takes to the microphone, along with twiddling every knob and playing every single instrument, a task she injects with much buff and polish. ‘Comfort’ is resolutely a communiqué to diverse dance floors. Its inconsistencies in tempo tally with the space that varies massively in each track.

‘Dreamer’ transforms us into this very state of being, which hears her sing across astral chirps and burbles. ‘Blame’ delivers Nadine Shah’s pleading confession above melancholic guitars and bass groans that recall her more dubsteppin’ Nocturnal Sunshine moniker as huge chunks of light tear through us.

‘Stranger’ is another Maya sing-along and another signature bout of ranging music that is like a snakes-and-ladders of house, scampering about differing bass notes, crescendos and searing atmospherics.

House music’s fire will never go out. And this pack of rhythmic aces can only help fan its hypnotic flames.

8/10

Words: Matthew Bennett  

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