#house
Kyle Hall - From Joy | 2015
Wild Oats | WO18K
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Through no fault of his own, Kyle Hall landed in the somewhat precarious position of having Detroit's hopes pinned to him. Since the young DJ and producer debuted in 2007 on fellow Detroiter Omar S's FXHE imprint, Hall has been viewed as the great hope for the next generation of Detroit dance music. Hall kept up his end of the bargain, fostering the potent Wild Oats label, throwing parties in the city and, crucially, not absconding to New York or London or Berlin. Kyle Hall is doing it all, and his 2013 debut album, The Boat Party, sounded like it, anxiously flitting between a host of styles: electro, ghetto tech, filter disco, beat tracks.
It's against this backdrop of fervent activity that Hall's second album, From Joy, stands out so fully. A richly melodic exploration that expertly balances astral reverie with rhythmic heft, it's the kind of fully realized statement no one was really expecting Hall to make. Not because he didn't have the talent, but because, well, he seemed busy. A three-LP set featuring eight expansive tracks, From Joy is ambitious but warm and approachable. In its openness, imagination, and sense of history, From Joy feels like the child of Detroit's legendary exploratory radio shows. The concept is simple: jazzy pianos, walking basslines, and probing synth explorations welded to house music's 4/4 drum templates.
Jazz has always been valuable in house music—as source material and as a thematic link to another form of (largely black) outsider expression—but From Joy uses jazz a little differently than usual. Hall doesn't sample much here, instead borrowing from jazz its ensemble nature, the sense of unity achieved when the elements of a track lock together just so. Where most dance music feels sequenced, From Joy feels played. Where most machine music employs randomizations and swung notes to remind you of its human nature, From Joy just kind of flows.
Hall is able to achieve this in part because From Joy sounds fantastic. You will pass entire tracks—five- and six-minutes long—zeroing in on the richness of one tone or another. For all of a synthesizer's endless possibilities, it's easy to remember that many of them were conceived with the more conservative purpose of emulating traditional instruments. And From Joy is conservative in this sense, dialing up exquisite, harmonically rich synth basslines—see opener "Damn! I'm Feeln Real Close"—and sonorous leads. One of the album's least dance-y tracks, the contemplative "Wake Up and Dip," is a showcase for a squelchy solo as expressive and felt as any old vanguard. Hall does all this without betraying his dance music bonafides, as side-long tracks such as "Dervenen" and "Strut Garden" offer DJs and dancers ample acreage. The latter track improbably lives up to its name, a whole lawn of little jukes and swaggers. Its bassline makes all the familiar moves, freeing you to make the unfamiliar ones.
From Joy effortlessly functions as both dance music and a home listening experience. Kyle Hall, an artist who has built his young career around doing it all, has made an album that does it all. From Joy, imbued with the past but not overly reverent of it, is Hall cashing in on the prodigious talent glimpsed in his prior work. It's tempting to hold it up as a capital-letter statement, a totem of his hometown. It's equally tempting, and probably healthier, to spin it back and delight in its abundance.
Pitchfork.
