Given how everything sounds vaguely tropical in 2017 — well, that or totally grey — it’s weird thinking back on how Osaka’s Soleil Soleil was so ahead of this trend. If he was outside Asia, he’d be Kygo! However, the Kansai artist is always a few steps ahead of the sounds clogging festival grounds, and his new collection My Way Or The Highway finds Soleil Soleil exploring many new areas of dance music. They range from the pleasant afternoon shuffle of opener “What’s Going On” (featuring some lovely horn blurts) and a pitch-shifted take on his own “If I Could” featuring Cloudy Busey, which takes the song from melancholy to menace. There are surprisingly stripped-down numbers such as “Night Jam,” and then some radical reimaginings of existing songs, like Passion Pit’s “Little Secrets.” Listen above.
