The music of Corduroi is well constructed stories put into music form. You hear a sense of beginning, middle, and end throughout each song on Anything For Now, and that comes from someone who is in total control of how the songs are created, mixed, produced, and heard. Cody Wilson is the man behind Corduroi, and I think one of the things that makes the songs work is his sense of shading. Like a painting, he knows how to make certain parts of songs dark, bright, dim, sunshiny, calm, or windy. Some of the ways he programs his beats is a bit like Jan Jelinek, taking the abstracted minutiae and turning it into something much fuller than its sources.
In fact, the songs on here are like musical poetry, and while there are voices (both human and otherwise) throughout, it’s the music that helps create the dialogue. When he gets into a heavy dance groove, it’s as if Diplo decided to clean out the noodles from the warehouse and make an industrialized stew. “Bangarangarang” takes a few hints from 80′s synth/dance pop and brings it to modern times without losing its original impact, but rather showing how the best sounds of the past no longer have to be archaic, in the right hands.
Corduroi makes subtle dance hits that could be the secret tracks you love from forgotten Giorgio Moroder soundtracks, but he’s more than that. He also plays with everything from vintage synths (or plug-ins that simulate the old sounds) to samples of semi-known originl, but he’s much more than that too. On the surface, it’s just abstract sounds compiled into a flavorful recipe, and yet within these songs is someone who could easily be a part of the next generation of pop hits (if he wished to go that way), soundtrack excellence, or tunnel visions for the cool parts of video games. It sounds like he’s willing to try out a bit of Anything, and For Now, anything is much better than the nothing that’s posing as insignificant pop appeal. - This Is Books Music |
