Album Review: AM & Shawn Lee Resurrect Sexy ’60s Psychedelica And Exotic Electronica

“ We...bonded over our mutual love of vintage French, Italian library and film music.
” Shawn Lee A masterpiece of vintage sounds and sensual exotic revelries, the collaborative effort, Celestial Electric, from London’s Latin neo-soul rhythm guru, Shawn Lee, fuses with the sweetly washed-out pop vocals of Los Angeles’ AM perfectly.

Released on Rob Garza from Thievery Corporation‘s influential electronica label, ESL, Celestial Electric murmurs lightly over the psyche, a lyrical ghost of somber regrets highlighted by the classic ’60s and ’70s swinger-era retro Italian psychedelica, Brazilian tropicalisimo, Serge Gainsbourg-era yé-yé style vocals, and the glittery crackle of modern electronica.

Shawn Lee recalls the story: “We listened to a lot of music together and bonded over our mutual love of vintage French and Italian library and film music and nuggets from the Finders Keepers record label. I suggested that we make an album together, and the rest is history.”

“ We both knew we had something pretty special, and it just took off from there.
” AM It is no surprise that, collectively, AM and Shawn Lee have worked with the likes of AIR, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Caetano Veloso, Saint Ettienne and Coldcut. Celestial Electric shimmers seductively with both modern and vintage influences, expertly nodding to the burgeoning days of synthesizers, the space age wanderlust and the innocence-drenched sexual experimentation of a generation.

Celestial Electric deftly starts out with “City Boy,” a downtempo electronica bossa nova that starts similarly to Antonio Carlos Jobim‘s “The Girl From Ipanema” and bubbles up with sexy electro-Latin guitars. While Jobim was enamored with a scantily-clad lady along the shoreline, AM has snatched the beauty off the beach and into his urban abode: “Now you’ll be my lady, livin’ in my city.”

AM and Shawn Lee’s slick retro-stylings were developed after a modernized pen pal system of musical experiment. After the two met and bonded over their shared interest in music, Lee used his sonic arsenal of vintage tape machines to create beats which he sent to AM.

Inspired by Lee’s funky grooves, AM added the vocals, guitars, bass and synths. Afterwards, Lee added keyboards, percussion and a variety of instruments and mixed the tracks.

“It was refreshing to work this way,” AM says. “When we started, Shawn shot me a drum beat and I immediately wrote ‘City Boy’ over it. We both knew we had something pretty special, and it just took off from there.”

“ I really used Shawn's beats to help shape the songs, and I let the restrictions determine the outcome.
” AM “I really used Shawn’s beats to help shape the songs, and I let the restrictions determine the outcome. If the beat changed or did something weird, then I wrote to it. The process was very quick, and every time I would get a file from Shawn, it was like Christmas morning. I couldn’t wait to hear what he had come up with, and I think he felt the same way.”

The driving snare-drum, warbled keyboard and guitar, and icy synth-organ of ”Lonely Life” suggests a different outcome for our city slicker, one awash with midnight scandal, sexy interludes, and ultimately, loneliness: “On the surface/every night/beauty haunts you/deep inside/I don’t know you/you don’t mind/for the moment feel alive.”

Just as one might expect from an album ripe with exotic psychedelica, funky breakbeats, and sensual jazz fusion, Celestial Electric boasts pretty pockets of warm electro-soul melodies.

However, songs like “Can’t Figure It Out” and “Dark Into Light” with their driving drumbeats, funky ’70s bass plucking, jangly xylophones, and AM’s falsetto carve precarious shadows through the sonic terrain with lyrics like  “When we’re gone/our ghosts live on” “Have we tried/have we done our best to turn the wrong into right/the dark into light.”

“ We used a lot of lo-fi gear, but the music we made sounds like much more than that.
” Shawn Lee One of the more poppy songs on the album, “Somebody Like You” has a guttural, soulful groove and all the makings of a late-night radio hit, the song drowned in the heady afterglow of drunken, disappointing night.

The album ends with the slightly creepy, funk-fueled instrumental joint called “Callahan.” While the bass sends your body swooning, synthesizers swirl around in horror movie minor tones, instruments that sound like anxious phone calls make the drum beats a little more treacherous.

Overall, Celestial Electric is a masterful symbiosis of decades worth of soundtrack music, the sexy underbelly of many vintage genres, and the keen, experimental musicianship of AM and Shawn Lee.

Lee sums it up perfectly: “The whole thing really exceeded my expectations, and I think we really upped each other’s game. The sound of this music is shaped by cheapo Casio and Yamaha synthesizers, and an old four-track cassette machine.”

“All of the drums were recorded with one cheap plastic mic on the four-track. We used a lot of lo-fi gear, but the music we made sounds like much more than that.”

AM & Shawn Lee-Celestial Electric

Amazon

Tracklisting:

1. “City Boy”

2. “Lonely Life”

3. “Can’t Figure It Out”

4. “Dark Into Light”

5. “Different Forces”

6. “Jackie Blue”

7. “Somebody Like You”

8. “Promises Are Never Far From Lies”

9. “Down The Line”

10. “The Signal”

11. “Winter Sun”

12. “Callahan”