Welsh duo ISLAND follow last year’s mixtape with their first full EP, Nokia.

Released on Crazylegs, it showcases a stage in ISLAND’s development (roughly 18 months to two years ago) when the duo were making “organic but synthetic” club music that drew from the sounds and tempo of grime and Southern hip-hop, but carried a sheen that the label associated with early Dreamcast games. ClubNiGHTS into Dreams? Who knows, but Nokia is out today on the entirely old school yet entirely appropriate format of CD. Order it here, and stream the full EP below.

ISLAND aren’t much for interviews, so to accompany this stream, we asked Crazylegs’ boss Shandy for some words on how Nokia came together.

Shandy: “I first met ISLAND about 18 months back, I can’t remember how, but I ended up with a bunch of tracks and I was really intrigued. I found it pretty raw and harsh and at the time I didn’t really understand how it could fit into the Crazylegs narrative but there was something about it that really attracted me.

“We stayed in touch, they started making the 100 hour train journey from deepest darkest Wales to come to our parties, and Gage started saying to me we should bring them in and release some stuff. To be honest Gage always preempts my ideas by about six months. Last year we were going to London to do this party at Fire, Bloom was at mine working on ‘Vessel’ and I just had my earphones in listening to ‘Vola’ on repeat for about three hours. think that’s when an EP started to form in my head.

“I’ve got hundreds of ISLAND beats here, a lot of really raw or unfinished, so it was such long difficult process trying to work out even a suitable format let alone a tracklist. We talked about everything – vinyl, DVDs, iPhone games, websites, etc as ways of presenting the music. In the end we decided to compile a handful of tracks from a certain period of their development. Everything on Nokia is about 18 months to two years old and it’s all got this hyper colourful, kinda organic but synthetic feel. it reminds us of early 3D games consoles, Dreamcast era, so we went with CD format to tie in with that. It just felt right. Shouts to Brez on the visual side cos it wouldn’t work without him.”

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