King Krule - The OOZ

If 2013's 6 Feet Beneath The Moon was simply an effort to get proper studio recordings of the tween ballads Archy Marshall wrote in his early Zoo Kid days, The OOZ finds King Krule fully dug in and spreading his wings. Where guitars were front and center for the duration of 6 Feet (probably to make some sort of statement in the post-chillwave era), on this sophomore outing, Marshall seems much more comfortable showing his hip-hop and dance music influences. His mesmerizing patchwork of celestial pads, Primo-style sample chops, street sax, post-punk beats and jazz guitar licks is tactfully interspersed with pirate radio ambience and Burial-esque rainfall. Peep him flexing his incredible range on codeine bossa nova joint “Logos,” basement punk show cannonball “Emergency Blimp” and sublime jazz meditation “The Cadet Leaps”; all mesmerizing. He settles into a bizarrely addictive Monster Mash flow on album highlight “Dum Surfer,” urgently modulating up and down octaves while trading bars with a spooky alter ego. Marshall may only be 24, but OOZ is clearly the work of a grown man. In fact, the only time he shows his age is in thinking “Czech One” would make for a clever song title (sounds like something I would have thought was cute at 16 only the music would have been 100x worse; alternatively, this kid wrote “Out Getting Ribs” when he was 16). Marshall builds a world you can completely lose yourself in, with loads more atmosphere than 6FBTM (think Basic Channel producing The Clash).