‘Come to Canada You Will Like It’ is the initial release of Project Pablo’s new label Verdicchio Music Publishing, the first full-length album from the Montreal-based artist since ‘I Want To Believe’, released in 2015 via 1080p, and following two excellent extended players on Ninja Tune sub-label Technicolour. A meditative piece of work Holland explains to be an attempt to translate the feeling of “slowing down while finding the balance between rural and city living” into music.
Project Pablo’s sound is undoubtedly influenced by the Canadian Riviera’s house scene, but it doesn’t exhaust itself in it as he’s always experimenting new paths and most of the times his flair for contagious melodies prevails – giving his music a distinctive trademark. Holland’s melody-driven signature sound has always been placed in the context of dance-oriented music, while here four-to-the-floor plays a marginal role, setting the dancefloor aside in favour of a domestic dimension. Quite surprisingly in fact, ‘Come to Canada You Will Like It’ is in most of its parts an ambient album.
There’s a sort of introspective vibe going throughout the LP, as if this was the result of some soliloquy the artist made whilst spending time around his own land, the latter being a conceptual backbone of this work, as the album’s beautiful artwork and title accurately suggest. The A-side is mostly about funk and ambient, going crescendo from the beatless ‘Intro’ to ‘Tunstall’, the only house-tinged piece on the first half. In between, we find three broken-funk, mellow jams where especially ‘Just a Thought’ is catching the ear with its fluctuating and cheerful keyboard line.
On the flipside, the interlude ‘Half Time’ introduces the album’s two most interesting kick-driven tracks: ‘Nanana’, a Kylie Minogue inspired jam where a bassline clearly evoking the Australian singer pop-hit ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ pairs delightfully with one of Project Pablo’s typical enchanting melodies, and ‘To Sealeigh and Back’ – a bubbling synth progression sustained by percussive drums.
After this section, the emphasis decreases until the last track ‘Fine Match’, a nice ambient piece, closes the circle – reconnecting the thread with the album’s beginning. Right before that, on ‘It’s Okay That It’s Like This’ the Canadian producer leaves a lot of empty spaces helping the track to breathe and create that calming feeling the whole album aims to provide. Even though each track is deeply enjoyable on its own we’re talking about a solid work where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and where each track acquires full meaning when interacting with the other ones. What at first sight could seem a lack of variety in sounds throughout the album actually feels more like a certain spacious linearity making room for a long and immersive listening.
Come To Canada You Will Like It is released via Verdicchio Music Publishing on 22nd June, pre-order a copy from Juno.
TRACKLIST
A1. Intro
A2. No Interest
A3. Rent Day
A4. Just A Thought
A5. Tunstall
B1. Half Time
B2. Nanana
B3. To Sealeigh And Back
B4. It’s Okay That It’s Like This
B5. Fine Match
Discover more about Project Pablo and Verdicchio Music Publishing on Inverted Audio.