Cuthead – Everlasting Sunday

The quality Deep House, beats, downtempo and what have you releases keep coming this year; I can see 2013 being reflected upon with a fond sense of nostalgia. This evening whilst on my usual trawl for fine audio I happened across this new release on the Uncanny Valley label and I feel certain already that it will feature somewhere within my list of favourite records for this year already…

‘Everlasting Sunday’ by Cuthead is a mini album/long-playing EP that’s brimming with deep and lazy sound that manages to sidestep being over-indulgent. The laziness is indeed suggested by the title – a concept that most music lovers can relate to. I’m sure I’m not the only one to have dreamt of an eternal Sunday of laziness, with just a pile of music to listen to.

This record opens out with some leisurely Deep House, with looping keys and vocal hooks which soon turns to twisted, jacked-out garage. It is followed by the more upbeat ‘Nautic Walking’ which has a killer bassline before ‘Minerals’ jacks things out again, with a strong hint of jazz (rhodes, sax). The title track ‘Everlasting Sunday’ follows, dropping the tempo and really bringing in that lazy sunday feeling – smooth deep Hip Hop; the strongest track of the bunch in my book. ‘Hold On’ maintains the slower tempo but veers nearer the sort of Jazz/Funk/Soul effected instrumental Hip Hop you might expect from Dilla or Ta’raach. Following on nicely here is one of those contemporary boogie/beats work outs you might hear from Tom Trago or Flying Lotus but like many tracks on this record, there’s a twist…piano keys completely flip the groove on its head.
‘Vice-Versa’ comes in next and this one’s something really special – another album highlight; a short downtempo cut, again reminiscent of Flying Lotus. Penultimate track ‘Deep Shadows’ brings a back the soul, aboard more modern sounding boogie goodness. ‘Everlasting Sunday’ despite its title, must end. It does so with the aptly titled ‘Outro’, a beautiful downtempo groove with wonderful strings, clocking in at a painfully short 1 minute and 21 seconds

Overall, this short and charming record has gripped me this evening. What’s really interesting is the way it is set up – the faster, Deep House  cuts are positioned at the beginning of the record when some artists might prefer to place them towards the end, or intersperse them with the other slower tracks. This record just gets more and more laid back as time unfolds, just like a lazy Sunday. Highly recommended

To check out the album click play above or HERE to be taken to the release page, where you can grab a digital copy or one of the limited edition vinyl copies (at the time of writing)