[Audio] Hot Natured’s ‘Off World Lover’

2013’s Different Sides Of The Sun, by robotic House supergroup Hot Natured is still one of our favourite albums of the decade so far. The outfit, consisting of London SynthPop turned synthetic House master Ali Love, Chicago DJ superstar Lee Foss, Wales’ fines Jamie Jones and Cazals’ Luca C delivered an instant classic in their début full length record. Sounding unlike anything else around at the time, the album grabbed house and took it down a decidedly 80s Electro alleyway for a good seeing to. Ali Love’s futuristic, Sci-Fi themed vocal performances, paired with a host of quality guests, and an array of stripped down & groovy, analog dance tracks made Different Sides Of The Sun something both compelling and unique. It’s an album that still in heavy rotation round these parts.

It’s been eighteen months since the last new tune from this foursome. We’ve had reMix singles in the meantime (including the amazing Luxry mix of Benediction) but new in terms of original track. Well the wait was finally over with the announcement of Off World Lover. The single is due out in September, as a prelude to the group’s sophomore album that is slated for a 2016 release and will feature a remix from Bristolian producer Will Clarke.

Appropriately released on Jones and Foss’s Emerald City label, Off World Lover continues deeper along their visionary House journey. From a title that brings BladeRunner to mind, to Ali’s interplanetary lyrics, to the otherworldly lead lines this is definitely SynthPop and House music for futurists.

Hot Natured have this knack of making raw, analog sounds sound rich and full. Like most Hot Natured tunes, Off World Lover is quite minimal in it’s arrangement, but never feels like it. In lesser producers hands this synthetic orchestra might sound lacking, but these four maestros can eschew flashy, cheap, modern production tricks and still sound as bombastic as any of today’s big, overproduced, dance tunes. With a growling, rumbling bass undulating over a skippy House beat the foundations are laid for this galactic opus. Synthesizers bleep, sounding like the alerts of a spaceship’s computer while electronic strings zip past like starlight and an otherworldly hook plays in the distance like a half-heard Theremin. Over this Ali’s passionately delivers his long-distance lament, calling out between the planets to his long lost love. Howe Hot Natured manage to sound like this, and never once stop being unbelievably funky is a mystery. But they do, and we’re all thankful for that.