Natural Element

The trailblazing German producer is back, this time applying his sparkling flair and infectious appeal to the widescreen spectrum of psychedelic, starry-eyed jams of his third album, comfortably nestled into a bean bag in the backroom. Natural Element coincides with the 10th anniversary of his revered debut LP Rivers of the Red Planet, which remains a cherished high watermark for label and artist alike. It also serves to highlight how much time has passed, and how much has changed. 2018’s follow-up Lo Siento Mucho Pero No Hablo Tu Idioma was a step into many other musical approaches and made clear Graef didn’t want to rest on the broad appeal of his earlier funked-up, jazz-sampling house sound. Natural Element is the sound of an artist more at ease with the parts of his legacy which hold true, and those he wants to let go of. But there absolutely is funk to be found on Natural Element. It’s in the low-slung chill-out of ‘Sports (Is Good For You)’ and the nagging synth-slap-bass underpinning ‘Around The Globe’. But the glue which holds the album together across all kinds of tempos and energies is a shimmering, organic psychedelia — dreamy chords and artful sonic brushstrokes which gleam out of the mix. It’s a quality universal across the aqueous beauty of tropical breakbeat roller ‘We are the World (Test Drive)’ and the cascading slo-mo ecosystem of album-opening double-act ‘Sound Bytes’ and ‘Zitar’. Casting one ear back to that landmark debut LP feels like listening to an entirely different epoch, not just for Graef but for music as a whole. What’s heartening is that the magic which made Graef stand out back then is still absolutely present and correct in his new guise. It would be far less rewarding if he was just trotting out more of the same formula, after all. As he says himself: “There is nothing worse than stagnation and conformism. I still am the same person, my ideals and values have not changed much, but my influences and approaches have.”