Rayko – Rebirth

 
Music
Spanish producer Rayko has been building up to his “Rebirth” over the past five years, be it his disco re-edits or the one-off cuts on various well respected electronic music imprints.
 
 This debut long player is informed by electro, Italo house, Balearic vibes and salty air. “Balearic intro” is pure beach hut on a remote island, catching those last rays before day breaks into night, it even has the sound of a windstorm through the track, the mid-tempo beats and dreamy guitar work hint at a Pink Floyd meets The Orb influence.
 
The driving Moroder basslines fused with early 90’s trance lines of ‘The Cave’ is a real treat, halfway through, the analogue synth lines appear and take the track to a whole new dimension, another track that utilizes guitar, but instead of the Dave Gilmour-ism, this is 80’s fm radio, big haired rock geeetars.
 
“Nightology” is prowling in dark room’s ala Al Pachino in the 1980’s film ‘Cruising’, if the bass-line wasn’t camp enough, the sleek offbeat bassline and wailing divas will have you raising a finger to your puckered lips in an instant. “Ruso’s Theme” continues the retro-vocalisms but this time over a chunky 80’s pop track, thinks disposable popsters Five Star remixed by Grum.
 
Elsewhere you have hypnotic space disco on the title track, “I Feel Love” basslines added to non-existent soundtracks for 60’s sci-fi films: fused with synths that sound like strings on “He Came From Space” and on “Goodbye Baby” he merges hard rocking wah wah guitars, and re-imagines the build up to the latter part of Frankie’s “Your Love”, resulting in something just as sultry and majestic.
 
The deal breaker for Rayko on this debut is how the album is seeped in electronic music’s history, but sounds contemporary throughout, never retro, even when he busts a synth sound that could come from an early Trax release, there’s nothing hammy about the way he does it, this is not an easy thing to do, Rayko makes it look so, so simple.