The Pop Corporation

When times are hard, it’s difficult to stop yourself from daydreaming of some blissful, endless summer where shirts are linen, your toes wriggling in the sand, and everyone, everywhere, is a glorious mix of people from all over the globe living in some harmonious Utopia, chilled glass of wine in one hand, pack of Camel Blue cigarettes in the other, just vibing.

Well, it’s a little less difficult to imagine when you are listening to the music of Nu Genea – Naples’ finest purveyors of global, groovy music. Mixing everything that’s good about Balearic, disco, Hi Life, Turkish psychedelia, North African funk, Brazilian Tropicalia, Italo, sun-kissed cosmic rock and anything else that gets you in a good mood from an expensively assembled record collection, Nu Genea have been a salve for the soul with every release from the brilliant ‘Nuevo Napoli’, to the utterly enchanting ‘Bar Mediterraneo’ and other side hustles.

Their music is diverse, but knitted together with warm analogue synths and irresistible rhythms that just bathe you in whatever magic is happening around the Amalfi Coast these days. Alongside Parbleu, Mystic Jungle, Stella, Ed Longo, Rosa, Whodamanny, Capinera, and more, there’s something in the water (olive oil?) down there, and Nu Genea are the top of the pile.

Supremely danceable for one, but also, as sophisticated as it comes, Nu Genea are right at the forefront of this new wave of Balearic music, and alongside something of a renaissance elsewhere with the likes of Σtella, JIM and even Poolside and Kaytranada, there’s been a spate of releases that are creating a space for listeners to drift away to a place where all the rough edges and nonsense have been worn away in favour of something more idyllic.

That is not to say this is to be reduced to something like Easy Listening (not that there’s anything wrong with that) – there’s something mildly revolutionary in the approach to welcoming all corners of the planet and folding it into the music, to make an alternative that doesn’t buy into pointless land grabs or tribalism – this is truly music for all, and with ‘People Of The Moon’, Nu Genea have done it again.

Where Nu Disco replaced the shifting tempo of the source material with a solid quantised drum pattern, Nu Genea are much more organic and analogue-forward, which allows for a freer groove, making the whole thing feel like it’s almost taken directly from the environment, rather than something robotic trying to sound retro.

The textures feel real, probably because they are exactly that. Edits feel like they’ve been spliced with tape, and there is plenty of room and space in the mix, even if Nu Genea’s attention to detail keeps the music elevated above something that’s solely designed for dancing with.

Throughout the album, you’ll be thinking of magic LPs by Asha Puthli, Gal Costa, Habibi Funk, the dubbier end of freak-disco, Tom Tom Club, ESG, Bappi Lahiri, Jorge Ben Jor, and even Studio One reggae – it’s all there in the impeccable choices made by two people with exquisite taste.

There’s too many standout tracks to name without simply cutting and pasting the whole tracklisting – opener ‘Acerela’ is particularly hot and is a perfect capsule of what makes this duo so wonderful, but then so is ‘Carè’ and ‘Sciallià’.

If Nu Genea is a familiar name to you, then this is your call to buy ‘People Of The Moon’ – if the name is new to you, this is your sign to buy the entire back catalogue.

There’s few things on the planet as good and nourishing as a Nu Genea album, and this latest album deserves to cement their reputation as one of the modern greats even further.

Perfection.