Premiere: Rocco Universal – Kerobokan

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Music

Cosmic machine funk…

Patrizio Cavaliere keeps two names in his coat,
One writes the liner notes, one steers the disco boat;
He built an alien funk from thick bass and slow chug,
Through Bali’s twilight skies where the sunsets never stop,
He bends the proto-house until the psychedelia drops,
And calls the whole thing Rocco – a cosmic tiger’s hug.

Now Kerobokan drips from saturated drums and haze,
Four tracks entwined through electro-funk and cosmic disco days;
Shaped slow and patient where the island residency runs deep,
Through cosmic chug and proto-house the melodies collide,
Beneath an evolving twilight sky, undulating tide,
On the eighteenth, Cosmic Tiger wakes it from its sleep.

We’re premiering Kerobokan, the title track off Rocco Universal’s new EP – out 18 September on Cosmic Tiger

Rocco Universal is the alias of Patrizio Cavaliere, who also happens to run Cosmic Tiger itself – started as a blog in 2019, gone quiet for a while, now back as what he calls a slow-moving but trusted archive of interviews, conversations and dancefloor oddities. He writes for Juno and Mixmag Asia, holds down a residency at Potato Head Bali, and has previously landed productions on Leng and Soul Clap.

The EP is four cuts of cosmic machine funk, recorded on analogue synths with feeling put well ahead of control – saturated drums, thick bass, melodies that take their time getting anywhere. Shaped patiently around that Bali residency, the tracks move through cosmic disco, proto-house, electro-funk and psychedelic chug, each one finding its place beneath evolving twilight skies. Whoever’s naming the tracklist deserves a mention too – Mutiny On The Sex Raft opens things, Floating Free closes them.

Kerobokan sits third, named for the stretch of Bali it was shaped in – slow-burning, intuitive, built for the point in the night where nobody’s watching the clock.

Kerobokan, below. The EP’s out 18 September on Cosmic Tiger.

Dig in and listen below: