PREMIERE : Billion One - I Wanted To Need You

Billion One - Hi Cozy Paradise PRE-ORDER LINK: https://billionone.bandcamp.com/album/hi-cozy-paradise Label: Woodland Creatures (https://soundcloud.com/woodland-creatures-label) https://www.instagram.com/woodland_creatures_label/ https://linktr.ee/woodlandcreatures > Billion One (https://soundcloud.com/billion_one) https://www.instagram.com/billion_one_music/ Hey this is Skwirl here to grab at you briefly about the records we have coming for this year’s thematic cluster! The theme is Biome and each record has been linked to one of Earth’s distinct bioregions/ecosystem types. The second record in our Biome series is German producer Billion One’s stunning LP “Hi Cozy Paradise” and it is our Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests selection. “Hi Cozy Paradise” is a sprawling kaleidoscopic journey through a myriad genre and tonal stations in a wonderfully realised warm world of dense musical biodiversity. It’s colourful and engaging and very often breathtaking in its beautiful soundscapes. Billion One is multi-instrumentalist Sven Strohschnieder whose work is typified by an incredible deft musicality coupled with dynamic and intricate sound design. Sven is a chameleon of style and genre - from Balearic downtempo to 80s coded pastoral electronica forays and off to heavy thuds of quasi slowed electro, “Hi Cozy Paradise” is no doubt one of his most explorative and comprehensively vast works to date. The LP hovers around concept album territory with each track offering up a wholly different expression of the overarching theme of paradise in all its forms and idiosyncrasies - something perfectly realised in Blake Thompson’s stunning album artwork which splendidly captures the record’s pastel brilliance and warm, gently trippy, fantastical nature. Sven’s background as a drummer permeates throughout the record with tunes anchored by intuitively effortless and satisfyingly groovy rhythmic interplay; and, cheeky playful melodies - quite often punctuated by beguiling vocal chops - dazzle and delight and linger in the ear far after the record concludes. At 14 tracks and 82 minute run time the record is a dense sojourn structured in what can be thought of as two halves split directly at the halfway mark in the track list. The first half a warm wander through pastoral electronica vistas with the second quickly veering to heavier and chunkier locales before returning. The sheer breadth of musical ideas and environments on offer here is nothing less than staggering. It is this fertile and rich sonic diversity that gives the record its Biome classification: “Hi Cozy Paradise” is akin to an aural rainforest teeming with life of all kinds in a thick interconnected ecosystem just waiting to be explored.