helen island - last liasse

Second edition of the first Helen Island vinyl collection, released last year as a first-introduction round-up of a variety of their wide-range of digital-only output. As a calling card, it's a pretty effective summary of Léopold Collin's Paris based project, what the label rather accurately describes as 'ghastly and hallucinatory' and showcases a distinct melange of emo-ambient, alterna-pop miniatures that couldn't be much more redolent of the current moment. Hyper-pop vocal manipulations, foggy ambience and ghostly digital disorientation swirl and intersect in uncanny, dissociative ways, suggesting its creator has got high on a brew of Hype Williams, PAN's Mono No Aware compilation, West Mineral and PC Music. Outsider Pop, then? Perhaps, though it's the kind that favours druggy subversion over melodic accessibility - not that the latter isn't present, it's just submerged under a layer of lysergic ooze. As we've said about Helen Island before, this is very modern sounding music, the kind that carries with it both obvious ambition and an 'i'll-do-whatever-i-feel-like' attitude that keeps it the right side of 'weirdo'. Whatever your views on the matter, this is undoubtedly the language of pop music now and the ceiling for an act like Helen Island is hard to determine (though they might need a more obvious 'hit' to break the glass ceiling). Strange the trajectory of such bedroom synthesis. 
 
FFO: Voice Actor, more eaze/claire rousay, PC Music, Yves Tumor, Hype Williams