Available on: Ramp Recordings LP

Maxmillion Dunbar hails from Maryland, and like his potential peers Paul White and Bullion, makes music that’s aesthetically rooted in hip-hop but stylistically explores disco, library music, house and more.

He’s also pretty handy when it comes to describing his music; on the press release for Cool Water, his debut album, Dunbar refers to “earth tone blasts”, “slow ocean disco” and more. For me, what binds Dunbar’s music is its crystalline tones; even at its most dusty or bassy, the melodies are remarkably clear, and seem to reflect and refract the music around them. Dunbar describes ‘Pretty Please’, the album’s opening track as being “on some boogie party fly shit”, and in a club context he’s probably right, but as part of this album, it’s never quite close enough to dance to; each of these tracks are like sights seen passing through an underground cave. They arrive, they twinkle, and you pass them by. They’re often beautiful, but they don’t really stay with you, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Cool Water is transient music at its calmest.

There are, obviously, exceptions. ‘Girl’s Dream’, already released as a single, is a sly ear-worm, and it would be interesting if those sinister buzzes on ‘Way Down’ – one of few undercurrents of darkness on a mostly glistening record – that threaten to mutiny the rest of the track fulfilled their potential. But that doesn’t seem to be what Cool Water‘s about. This is a record of accomplished, subtle tracks that never impose themselves on you, or really even try to tug at the heartstrings; they’re content to just exist, and if their glint catches your eye then so be it.

Tam Gunn