Hanging Gardens is the debut for Michael Tyler and David Blake, the LA production duo better known as Classixx.
It seems their music is true to their namesake littered with features from a fine range of artists and producers, making the album overall, an impressive tribute to electronic pioneers and synth-happy musicians.
Straight up, Nancy Whang of LCD Soundsystem and The Juan MacLean provides vocals on “All You’re Waiting For,” a banger of a song to set the album on track.
“Holding On” oozes lashings of Daft Punk, in the vein of “Music Sounds Better With You,” and as a result of this likeness, is exciting and uplifting. Already released as a single, the tribute-of-sorts also, to an extent, lacks originality. While it’s widely accepted that musically much of the pioneering of genres and sound has been done and dusted, it’s occasionally a little to close for comfort.
“Long Lost” arrives as the album’s slow, gentle centrepiece, featuring the ever-identifiable vocals of Pat Grossi, the fire-headed electronic artist better known as Active Child. It’s sweet and gentle, with Grossi insisting “close your eyes and let me take control,” providing sufficient tranquillity to move through to the album’s conclusion.
Featuring almost at the end of the album, “Supernature,” is deeper, slower and richer, making it an appropriate final pinnacle for the album, in an understated, and slightly unconventional way.
The closing track, “Borderline,” featuring Kisses’ Jesse Kivel, and is a pacey track to take out the album. It’s a song that has echoes of Kavinsky in its melodic swell, making the listener wait for what feels like an agonizing amount of time that final drop. Though the drop never arrives, and as the album fades out delicately, it becomes the most fitting, understated conclusion for Classixx debut.
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Overall, Hanging Gardens is an album that certainly improves with each play, gaining a vintage aesthetic on top of its already nostalgic summer sound, but it lacked something to begin with, something that is unfortunately,never really remedied.
