Shoulder 2 Shoulder

Five years in the making, ‘Shoulder’ sees Soma’s ‘king of strings’ widening his remit to deliver his most rounded work to date. Fear not, he hasn’t left his trademark techno soul sound behind: ‘Stargazer’ sees his vocals immersed in reflective textures, while the shimmering grooves of ‘4 Absent Friends’ and ‘Is This’ are seductive explorations of electronic music. Apart from the dark techno breaks of ‘Into The Arena’ and the glacial down tempo electro-techno on ‘Intervals’, it sounds like Envoy has been spending a lot of time listening to classic Chicago house music. But, as his soul drenched vocals on the string led backing of ‘Move On’ and the trippy, vocal heavy re-work of ‘Night Moves’ so beautifully demonstrate, Envoy will always be a modern soul man.