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| Pitchfork |
 An interesting thing about the Night Slugs label is that it's managed to maintain "Next Big Thing" status over the past couple of years without ever really defining what it's about. The London imprint, partly known for launching bass hotshots Kingdom and Girl Unit, employs stylistically diverse artists, and there's never been a convenient tag like "purple" or "rave-house" to pin on them. Label founders L-Vis 1990 and Bok Bok even stress this in interviews. "We've always hated any genre associations with our music and I think it's pretty impossible to label it, it's just held together by a vibe," the former said a little ways back. This slipperiness has served Night Slugs well, but at a certain point you want something a little more concrete-- what is that vibe, exactly?Neon Dreams, the solo debut from L-Vis 1990 (real name James Connolly) does not answer this question. If Night Slugs' loose guiding principle up until now has been a colorful counterweight to dubstep and grime's murk and grit, Neon Dreams spins that idea in a hundred different directions. The record is (sometimes intriguingly, often frustratingly) all over the place. The starting point, though, seems to be pop. From the album title and M83-esque cover art to the use of guest vocalists, it's clear that Connolly is interested in making songs rather than just club tracks. And sometimes he does this really well. On "Tonight", for example, he throws some 1980s radio sheen on stuttery disco-house and winds up with catchy, retro-futurist boogie. "Play It Cool", arguably the best song here, also fits into this pop mode. Gooey synths, heavy drama, breathy female vocals-- it nails a very specific kind of dark and dreamy electro-pop. (Worth noting that it fits comfortably alongside such 2011 standouts as the aforementioned M83, Neon Indian's Era Extraña, and the Drive soundtrack.) If Connolly had extended this format (or even this vibe) throughout the album, the rest of it may have been as successful, but instead he incorporates so, so many other sounds. There's a different style on almost every track. You've got a quirky, Chromeo-style one, some brooding instrumental ones, one where a dude talks quasi-motivationally over revved up Chicago house, and so forth....full text |
| Bbc |
| How far we've come, together in electric dreams of the past. The debut album by London-based producer James Connolly, aka L-Vis 1990, is steeped in nostalgia for a neo-disco era that was itself post-modern and retrospective. It's a homage to the likes of Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers and Basement Jaxx among others –acts that, back in the 1990s, took the acid and funky tropes of 80s and 70s music and fondly refashioned them into something at once reverential/referential and contemporary. Now, they themselves have been refashioned, paid homage to, by L-Vis 1990. And so the music progresses, is handed down, refined and modified, twisted into new balloon shapes. Like many of his peers in the digital era, Connolly has chosen to eschew cold, state of the art technology in favour of the warmer, analogue hardware of yesteryear – classic synthesizers and Roland TR-707 drum machines. But there's a fine line between retro and retrograde, which Connolly neatly avoids stepping over. Forever You, the 2010 single featured here in abbreviated form with Javeon McCarthy guesting on vocals, reminds faintly of The Aloof and lives up to the cinematic, luminous implications of the album title. The Beach is linear, seductive and evocative, its synths star-bursting like a series of memory flashes. I Feel It and Lost in Love recall the eruption of French blue-eyed soul in the 1990s, the likes of Phoenix and Cassius (who Connolly recently remixed); while Cruisin' is all Moog-y, low bass riding across a squelching, acidic bubblescape. Elsewhere, Feel the Void, featuring Para One and Teki Latex, is an affectionate revisiting of some of electropop's po-faced, sombre tendencies (key line: "let the darkness take control"), while Tonight is twice-refried electro-funk, with Samantha Lim providing vocals as seductive and self-possessed as Neneh Cherry’s on Buffalo Stance. One More Day, again featuring McCarthy, is epic and vocoder-soaked, like reflections on a train journey home in the remaining light of a long summer's day, when the shadows are longest and the feelings most vivid. That's where we're at with Neon Dreams....full text |
| Residentadvisor |
| Though James Connolly's poppier material already stood out from the rest of the Night Slugs roster, Neon Dreams doesn't have music you're going to find on his label. The album is composed of short, digestible dilutions of Night Slugs hip-hop-informed house swagger, the kind of stuff you might find on Ministry of Sound or some other big-name mainstream dance outfit. Nonetheless Neon Dreams itself also doesn't seem to know what it wants to be, or exactly what audience it has its sights set on. Split down the middle between full vocal tracks and bite-sized instrumentals, it's not quite a pop album. But with the average track hovering around three-and-a-half minutes, it's not a dance album either. Thankfully, even if L-Vis might have sacrificed some of his "underground" cred, he certainly hasn't lost any of his deft dexterity. These are tight and professional tracks cut down to the bone—even if there's something impersonal about the dramatic synths and huge drums of "Illusions" or the beefed-up synthpop of "True Romance." The instrumentals are the album's most worthwhile moments, but they're also inescapably slight. Highlights like "The Beach"—a sunny send-up of Instra:mental's sleaze-house anthem "Let's Talk"—feel like they don't really belong here, there or anywhere, a few minutes of kinda-dancey beats on an album that flounders in a contextual void. It's the vocal tunes where Neon Dreams really starts to come apart. On "Tonight," he builds a stunning bed of boogie basslines and chugging sequencers for a no-name singer who sounds fatally disinterested. The songwriting isn't really there either: inane lyrics abound and melodies feel unfinished or amateurish ("Lost in Love"). It's a shame, because when everything does come together the potential seems stunning; EP holdover "Forever You" drops Shads' smooth vocals into an equally buttery backdrop. The Night Slugs connection comes back full-force for album standout "I Feel It," which has all the rolling rhythms and irresistible elasticity of the label's best. It's moments like those that make Neon Dreams more of a disappointment than it should be. It's still a solid album with generally something for everyone to appreciate. But it's also a little generic, and when you're one half of the duo that founded one of the most lauded labels of the past two years, that's the last thing you want to be....full text |
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