Detective Instinct ‎– Black Floral lp (Vinyl)

Detective Instinct ‎– Black Floral lp

"The gist Oli Heffernan makes some snazzy music and gets his heroes/mates to sing on it The music It seems to be the time of year for long-distance albums. I recently wrote about Flamingods' pretty good Hyperborea, and this is another glorious Frankenstein's Monster of a record. Black Floral comes 3 years after Heffernan's first album under the Detective Instinct moniker. The History of Headaches/American Novels was one of my favourite albums of 2011 (and I'd urge anyone with an ounce of musical taste to seek it out. Clue - it's here) and Black Floral takes that model and runs with it. Put together under sometimes tough circumstances the album can be dark, even menacing but there's also numerous moments of brightness, perhaps a built-in benefit of such a collaborative project. This one has turns from GW Sok (The Ex), Kevin Branstetter (Trumans Water), Jad Fair (Half Japanese) and Mike Watt (Minutemen) to name but a few. Each guest puts their own spin on Heffernan's compositions which vary between contemplative, meandering, psychotic, but always atmospheric, never dull. Black Floral is another fine accomplishment and hopefully not the last we'll see from Detective Instinct. Listen to "The Architect of Negative Space" - the first of 2 Karen Schoemer collaborations, this track is a short story laden with lo-fi synth and poppy 80's bass, one of the lighter moments on Black Floral. Also one of the best. "The Sum Of A Son" - a short acoustic number which I would most accurately describe as "mellow". Surprising seeing that it's main players are Oli Heffernan (a member of noisy bastards Year Of Birds) and Mike Watt (Minutemen). Listen if... you like a good portmanteau, the light/dark of David Lynch, lofi, samples and cameos." - Adam Millard