Island Time

Feels like this album slipped through the net a bit on its 2018 release, perhaps a case of familiarity breeding a kind of dismissive engagement. It’s a risk when you’re a producer as regularly ‘on the money’ as Losoul, and it’s not entirely unfair to expect a kind of longueur to set in around the fourth album mark. But Island Time is a slow-burner, like other Losoul albums, humble at first, deceptive in its understatement. “Boppin Lover” is one of his finest house shuffles in some time, all pinpricks catching and tugging on the fabric of your clothes; dub is a presence across much of the album, but more for its capacity to submerge and resurface sonic elements at surprising moments, or in the slurried murk of the intro to “There We Were”; occasionally an abstract jazziness surfaces, but never to the detriment of the rhythm that staples each of these seven songs to the vinyl.