As the new year starts, the second album from the instrumental iconic act The Soft Parts marks an easy place to escape into as you slowly step out into the world.
The Soft Parts first crossed our path back in 2022, delivering a noteworthy sound both experimental and free-flowing in its creativity. That quality remains, and this time we get a completely new set of sounds, instruments, and intentions, for the six-track project Innuendo.
Unpredictable yet seamless in its uniting of traits and genres ranging from jazz and trip hop to world music, funk, gospel and electro-pop, Innuendo begins with a post-twelve-minute sense of rising anticipation and ethereal dizziness. riviera is fascinating, beautifully composed and captured, unexpected yet satisfying, as it consistently fills the room and simultaneously guides the imagination in a handful of new directions.
Warm to funky basslines and freestyle keys are just part of the process for this album. style & substance follows and unites them once more, alongside something like retro cinematic industrial rhythms and ambient sounds that quickly take you somewhere new. Another extensive, ten minute track, that’s equally unprecedented as it nudges listeners down some adventurous new rabbit hole of creative expression.
What’s great about an album like this is the balancing of atmospheric appeal and outright creative absurdity. The Soft Parts are uninhibitedly playful with their compositions, and yet there’s still a sense of having that essential understanding of what holds an audience’s interest.
On that note, abyssinian is a personal favourite, chaotic and mildly haunting, later characterful and quirky, always offering something new to look out for, but never sacrificing its level of groove or rhythmic embrace.
Arrangement also matters, and for baby blue we enter a rightfully delicate, soothing arena of calming keys and synths, with a looping melodic pattern that naturally offers something hypnotic and comforting. Then for mystique, The Soft Parts are quick to recapture any wandering minds, offering a kind of film-noir darkness and intrigue that aptly paves the way for the project’s longest and perhaps most fluid, jazz-like venture.
Robert Dilemma is the artist and composer behind The Soft Parts, a distinguished creative producer, whose approach is consistently interesting and professional in equal amounts. This latest project is wrapped up with its title-track, a highlight from the album – a softly seductive exploration of intimate sounds and rhythms, presenting as a kind of mildly passionate conclusion for the dreamy and addictive layers and grooves that made up the rest of Innuendo.
Digital composition is timeless in many ways, and when the music has this organic, natural and profoundly human feel, it’s all the more important and valuable, when piercing through the noise and artificial electronic design of late. Innuendo sets and maintains an immersive mood, and the result is a journey likely unique to each listener. The mind wanders, the body calms, and the music works its magic without limit.
Download Innuendo via Bandcamp. Find The Soft Parts on YouTube.
