Full of glam-jams and mirror-ball beats, the former Architecture In Helsinki member's solo debut has a shimmyfull of soul and a bootyfull of bounce. 2ser Subscribers can win a copy all week on Breakfast, Overdrive and Static.
Super Melody is the brainchild of James Cecil, the Melbourne-based artist and producer who made his name with globe- and genre-trotting pop group Architecture In Helsinki. During 8 years with AIH he recorded the band's first two albums (at his itinerant Super Melody World studio), and played almost 400 shows as part of the group's hyperactive and far-flung touring schedule.
Assuming vocal duties for the first time, the debut Super Melody album "Destination Unknown" was written by James during 2008 at Super Melody World (this time located in the spare room of his dad's house in the Melbourne suburb of Kew). When dad went away for the weekend, his sister's bed was tilted up against the wall, in came a drum kit and an old 8-track tape recorder, and all the drums for the album were recorded amidst tense negotiations with the neighbours.
At the end of 2008, James' friend Cornel Wilczek - better known as electronic pop brainiac Qua - opened Electric Dreams Studio in South Melbourne, and James was able to shift production of the album to after-hours sessions in this space-age sonic laboratory. Now there was room for such luxuries as a string section, and thanks to some beautiful arrangements from viola player Biddy Connor (who James met when he recorded Kes Band's first album), "Destination Unknown" was starting to sound like a record.
Other guests included another Kes Band alumnus Laura Jean Englert, who lent her glass-clear voice to the album's opening track "Tinder Hearted". Cornel Wilczek - an LA-certified, electric guitar masterclass-giving, fret-shredding rock God in his teen years - laid down some smoking hot riffs for the album's lead-off single "Worker Bee". Julian Gilchrist of The Casinos channeled the spirit of the 80s through is tenor saxophone for the George Michael-meets-Marvin Gaye dance ballad "Tell Me That You'll Be Good To Me", as the Wagons' velvet-voiced secret weapon Mark Dawson gave Nate Dogg a run for his money with his emotive vocal adlibs.
In 2010 Super Melody is moving the crowd with a 5-piece live lineup that features Cornel Wilczek blazing the lead guitar, the un-sit-stillable rhythm section of Sashi Dharann (bass) and Tom Gould (drums and samples) of euphoric party-starters World's End Press holding it all together, and tropical percussion from the enigmatic Bongo Legs.
