Chad Valley’s ‘Young Hunger’

Chad Valley‘s forthcoming début full length record is a departure, or more an evolution, from his previous offerings. The Oxford based producer’s music is at the same time genre-less, and strictly Pop. We usually hate the term ‘genre-less’, we sincerely believe in a good old fashioned pigeonholing and hate the pretension of artists believing they are above that. But it might actually be true in Chad Valley’s case and the new album, Young Hunger, shakes off many of the tropes of his Chillwave roots whilst managing to retain his music’s unique character.

So Young Hunger ends up being some kind of crazy posy-Chillwave, slick R&B Pop with a raw, garage style ElectroPop or Indie-Electro covering. Last years Equatorial Ultravox EP was a dreamlike, Balearically chilled affair, and Youth Hunger builds on that but brings the vocals to the forefront more, making them feel more like traditional Pop songs, albeit ones heard in a dream. The albums opener, the Twin Shadow featuring I Owe You This perfectly exemplifies this, hazy synths and toy town drums should be strange bedfellows with R&B Pop, but it works so well. Twin Shadow isn’t the only guest appearance on the album, TEED, Glasser and Active Child, amongst others, all put in a appearance on the eleven tracks. The previously heard, Tell All Your Friends is one of the albums standouts, a slick retro Pop tune with a catchy as hell chorus that shows just how much Chad Valley’s music has matured. Elsewhere on the album you can hear snatches of LA Funk in the likes of Fall 4 U, the pure 80s soul of Evening Surrender, and the places where the album picks up into proper vintage SynthPop, such as My Girl or the albums title track, both of which wouldn’t seem out of place on the soundtrack to a John Hughes movies. Young Hunger really does exist outside of pigeonholes, and whist that annoys us, it also makes it one of the best albums of the year, and one that can be recommended to fans of ElectroPop, R&B, Pop, Retro Music, Chillwave…y’know, whatever.