You would be forgiven for thinking that praise from Jacob Collier would be enough to make this album stand out from the bunch, but we are pleased to report that Rupert Cox’s latest collection of chill masterpieces stands to a much higher standard than what can be set by any praise. A collection of truly sublime, zero-filler, confident cuts of cinematic, jazzy, and downtempo music that left me gasping for breath with the ending of each piece and the start of the next.
London-based musician and producer Rupert Cox is a rising star in his local musical community, and listening to what his debut album -titled Search Party- has to offer, it becomes increasingly noticeable that Cox has a wealth of ideas that he revels in exploring and developing. Melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and textural, Search Party contains songs that continually excel on those fronts, while uniformly boasting of terrific mixing jobs that make the songs extremely pleasing to behold.
Perhaps the songs of Search Party ended up sounding so pleasing because they reminded me of a favorite of mine that has gone into radio-silence for years, and that is the French electronica duo Air. Rupert Cox shares with Air an affinity for rhythmic simplicity and a tendency to establish solid grooves with deep pockets that are then saturated with electronic or instrumental content that drips with creativity, and Cox’s choices lying more often on the organic side of things, opting to use the piano and other acoustic instruments in favor of electronic ones gives his music a healthy sheen of forest greenness, adding a touching layer of color and character to every single piece of the eleven on this album.
Humbly ambitious, the pieces on this album often incorporate ideas that fall outside of the box, Cox works hard for those ideas to start feeling familiar and easy going in no time, and the results are pieces that are usually ambitious and off-kilter, while being consistently approachable. Taking ‘Embers’ as an example, this mid-album cut, and the longest cut, starts with tribal clanks and bangs, and a set of dreamy, off-center piano arpeggios, creating an atmosphere that is truly liberating, and maintaining it for almost the entire length of the piece. The wild, humongous stringed drone that kicks is in the latter half of the piece is a landmark on the album.
Cox’s artful usage of the piano is monumentally good on the album. A pianist first and foremost, Cox’s performances on ‘Fig Tree’, ‘Remember This’, and the closer ‘Green Yellow Brown’ are among some of the nicest and most balanced piano deliveries that I’ve had the pleasure of listening to all year. His jazz-driven sensibilities also help add a dimension of mystique to his parts, with the non-diatonic harmonies often sounding quietly triumphant and deeply magical. Cox is not all about fancy jazz tonalities and extended chord harmonies though. From the starter ‘The Nowhere Dance’, and its slow and steady buildup into a jubilant piece of joy-bringing dance music, to the caramelized melancholy of the arresting ‘Lament’, Cox proves often, and with ease, that he is as good of a composer as he is a pianist.
‘Search Party’ is a stunning array of musical offerings that sound uniformly cohesive and gorgeous. The debut of Rupert Cox puts us in front of an exceptional talent. A pure craftsman, Cox’s debut offering left me extremely thirsty for more from him.