I Have What I Gave

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On his fourth full-length, Italian producer Bottin continues to strike a balance between shimmering neo-disco and sleek, DJ-friendly house. His tracks are always filled with percolating rhythms and spiraling arpeggios, and while they're highly energetic and expressive, he doesn't go over the top into outright sleaziness. The tracks are easy to groove to and wrap your head around, but there's enough going on so that they don't feel simplistic. While cinematic odysseys like "Varosha" contain suspenseful, spooky melodies (Bottin did name his 2009 album Horror Disco, after all), the artist is just as likely to craft moonlit, lovelorn dance-pop tunes. The album's first single, "YAML" ("You are my love"), features joyous yet wistful vocals from returning guest Lavinia Claws, who sang on the closing track on Bottin's 2014 LP, Punica Fides. Lyrics like "I'll make your fantasies come true, and all I think about is you," combined with Bottin's backing vocals and a starry, chugging beat, capture the naivete of '80s Italo-disco, just as revivalists like Sally Shapiro did a decade earlier. Italo godfather Alexander Robotnick co-produced "Stellar Parade," another of the album's highlights, and a more retro-flavored improvement on their earlier "Parade" single. While it certainly doesn't hurt to have a co-sign from one of the genre's pioneers, the track could easily have been composed by Bottin solo -- he's mastered this sound completely. Outside of "YAML," vocals are generally used sparingly, with the fluttering "L'Amore" and "It's OK" consisting of little more than variations of their titles repeated. A few spoken passages appear on other tracks, including "Perfect Mind," which features a robotic voice reciting excerpts from the ancient Gnostic poem "The Thunder, Perfect Mind" over simmering acid techno. On the more hypnotic end of the spectrum, we have the dubby, dusty "Microdisco" and the more ecstatic, trancey "Twenty-Three." Bottin combines technical skill and creativity with a hint of mysticism, resulting in a highly functional, immersive audio journey. ~ Paul Simpson