Dukes Of Chutney – Hazel

Beats In Space / RVNG Intl

It has taken seven years for the Dukes Of Chutney to follow up 2013’s Domino with a full-length album. In that time on their long, strange trip, they seem to have infused sounds from numerous countries into a personal patchwork that plays like a series of mysterious and alluring postcards, drawing you out of your cosy living room and requesting that you join them in a way that is impossible to say no.

There is something intangible about this album; Hazel wavers on the limits of your vision like something underwater that you think you can reach, but is actually too far away. Its discreet merging of subtle yet different flavours means that you can never quite put your finger on what is coming next, but all the while has its arm around your shoulder like some new-found friend who seems cooler than anybody else you have ever known.

It starts off light and sunny like a French dream, diffuse languorous beats accompanying the languorous, echoey voice of Petra. You feel like stretching and yawning, and even when the beats become a little more insistent, the haze of drift and glissando electronics prevent anything from rising beyond the gentle. It feels comfortable yet different somehow. The donkey-ride rhythm of “Mystic Ape” pairs with little flourishes of sunny esoterica and spangled delight, reflecting like the glitter of a sunlit pool. You feel your feet dangling in the water here, but by “Flying Horse”, you are fully immersed with Petra’s voice overhead like wisps of cloud, lulling you into a dreamlike state.

There is a kind of slow-motion, diffuse feeling to the tracks. I found myself pondering over the beauty of bubbles on “Little War”. You never seem to be too old to watch in wonder as they take to the skies. They look so lovely and fragile, yet somehow manage to last much longer and be far stronger than you give them credit. One group with whom I could hear some similarities was Bowery Electric, in the gentle creep of “Rosemary’s Bae” and the evening comedown beats of “Scent Of India” in particular. That sense of distance, like watching from a removed perspective, is something they both share, but in “Scent Of India” there are scattered oriental electronics which with the help of E Ruscha V manages to push it in another direction again.

The sub-aquatic sensation comes to a head on “Come In, Go Away”, and you feel the water extending and warping as you look into the depths. It is a feeling that lasts as the album draws to a close, and by the time final track “Flying Horse (Reprise)” arrives, the moorings have come loose and it almost vanishes into a vertiginous limbo, with echoes of ’80s David Sylvian experiments and incongruous sax notes that are just a little bewildering.

Hazel is a dream of an album, but one that is lovely, warming and all-enveloping. I just looked on Bandcamp and all the coloured vinyl pressings have gone, but the sleeve has a real mystery to it that is in keeping with the sounds inside. It has been well worth the wait.

-Mr Olivetti-