The name Midnight Features inspires thoughts of late night TV and the campy, seedy movies that tend to go with it. Sure enough, Alex Hall and Emil Amos, the musicians behind Lilacs & Champagne, intend each installment in the self-described “fantasy” series to evoke a specific time and place in pop culture. To that end, the first installment, an EP titled Shower Scene (2014), was meant to recall TV soundtracks of the 1970s. The duo have not divulged the target of Made Flesh, a full album, but the overall feel is still very ’70s and ’80s, as if soundtracks for Blaxploitation and grizzled cop shows were mixed and processed through a 21st century digital processing machine.
In so many words, then, what you have here is instrumental hip-hop or downtempo. Once upon a time this type of music was called “trip-hop”. But far more important than any label is the methodology. Hall and Amos assembled Made Flesh using scores of samples they obtained through extensive field work and crate-digging. The result is both languid and evocative, chill-out music that is just sinister enough to prevent you ever nodding off completely. It’s a form that various musicians, DJs, and producers have been honing for the past 20 years. While Made Flesh doesn’t offer much new in the way of style and composition, it is thoughtful, well-made, and worth a listen or three if this is your kind of thing.
The titular sample on opener “Roses & Kisses” sounds like it’s from a country track. It’s a nice touch, as the laid-back soul rhythm and rippling keyboard comes in amidst washes of reverb and what sounds like thunder in the distance. The funk/jazz flavor and groovy, wah-wah guitars keep coming for the next couple tracks. Then comes the first hint that Made Flesh is not going to be all bedroom eyes and tropical breezes, though. “Case Closed!” is built around found dialogue between a female character and a hard-boiled police inspector. “Lieutenant, my sister did not commit suicide she had no reason to kill herself,” the woman insists. Then, a piano ripples in, drums rattle ominously, and a repeated keyboard line cranks up the tension. Usually in these situations, such dialogue is used to provide campy color or an amusing counterpoint to the hip-hop rhythm. In this case, though, the subject matter insists on playing it straight, which is unsettling.
Further song titles like “Peril”, “Dreaded Stranger”, and “Burning Sensation” all do good jobs of reflecting their titles, as Hall and Amos take the melodramatic strings of Stax-period Isaac Hayes and subvert them with mantra-like repeated sounds and still more reverb. Not even the obligatory “spaced-out comedown closing track”, “On Hold”, is immune. Its defining pan flute is put through a tremolo effect until it sounds more like a disabled hummingbird.
Lilacs & Champagne aren’t content with merely splicing some beats ‘n’ samples together in a way that sounds cool and retro/modern. For their day jobs, Hall and Amos helm the “experimental instrumental rock” band Grails. This probably explains the distinctly experimental, at times almost prog-ish edge lurking just beneath the surface of Made Flesh. At the very least it explains the prickly live guitars on the title track, which for some might spoil the blunted atmosphere.
Ingeniously, Hall and Amos have stuck closely to one convention of soundtracking. Each of these 13 tracks is short, none going much over three minutes and many lasting fewer than two. This ensures you don’t get bored, or complacent, with anything. It turns the songs into true vignettes. By themselves, some are more successful than others, but the composite result is as trippy and foggy-headed as an all-nighter spent in front of cable TV… without all the commercials.