Little People is the work of Laurent Clerc, a producer who grew up in the Swiss Alps and through his various travels has incorporated all the sounds he's picked up along the way into his music. Hip hop was an early love for Clerc but a move to the UK to attend university introduced him to the burgeoning electronic music scene there, giving him the basis for his early works. After an EP, his first full length Mickey Mouse Operation, released in 2006, became a bit of a cult hit among electronic music fans. I became aware of his music thanks to Pandora where numerous tracks from this debut album played on my favorite downbeat electronic station. The follow-up, We Are But Hunks Of Wood, would not see release until 2012 and although there was another EP in 2015, it has been another long wait for the next album from Clerc.
That wait finally came to an end in early January with the release of Landloper, Little People's third album. A move to the U.S., Portland, Oregon to be precise, in 2014 started the journey that ended in Landloper. Clerc worked with a number of vocalists this time instead of releasing another primarily instrumental album. Reva Devito's vocals were used as a starting point for chopping up and re-using throughout the album as vocal samples. Tif Lamson and Rahel Debebe-Dessalegne provide lead vocals on four tracks as well with Lamson featured on the lead single "Skies Turn Blue".
On Landloper, Clerc moves away from the prominent downbeat feel of his earlier work. This is a much more danceable Little People album, a journey across numerous electronic genres. Tracks like "How To Navigate", "Embrace" and "Tonight" recall Bonobo's more recent work, "Don't Give Up" is an outright uplifting vocal dance number, while "Lozenge Less" has a much darker feel, a song that seems destined for a spot in a sci-fi soundtrack. January is usually a slow month for music releases, it's nice to have a new Little People album in the world to help warm up the cold winter a bit.
Favorite tracks: "How To Navigate", "Lozenge Less", "Tonight", "Embrace"
Landloper was released January 11th, 2019 via Future Archive Recordings.
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