Fujiya & Miyagi's ninth studio album,
Slight Variations, returns the four-piece lineup they established in 2016 (founding members
David Best and
Stephen Lewis, bassist
Ben Adamo, and drummer
Ed Chivers) for their most ambitious outing yet. Intended as a stylistic retrospective of sorts, as well as a nod to where they might be headed, it incorporates Krautrock, dub, disco, house, and art pop influences, among others (West African funk and more), often converging multiple elements on sleek, effortless-sounding tracks. To top it off, their signature wry detachment is in full bloom on songs like the striding opener "Slight Variations, a disco and house merger that credits
Charanjit Singh's
Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat as an influence on its bassline. It finds
David Best deadpanning lines like "Leave space for the bass/Put the rhythms in the right place" and "When you live in your head/It's easy to neglect your body" to spacy melodic keys and a relentless groove. Likeminded tracks include the funky "Olympian Heights" and narcotic closer "Feeling the Effects (Of Saturday Night)," though these are spaced out in the track list to make room for the dub-influenced "FAQ," multifaceted highlight "New Body Language" ("You don't need a degree in philosophy to read your body language"), and whimsical quasi-instrumentals "Non-Essential Worker" and "Oops." The latter is an infectious representative of possible future directions, with its more treble-centric sci-fi blend of various electronic timbres and guitar patterns that ride along a brisk, simple beat with snare on two and four. All told, it's a delight to hear that, over 20 years into
Lewis and
Best's partnership, they are pushing their recognizable but rarely formulaic sound into fresh territory. ~ Marcy Donelson
