Redinho (Tom Calvert) has got quite an illustrious fan club, whose members include Jessie Ware, Mark Ronson and Hudson Mohawke – and in a sense, if you put the music of these three together you’d not be too far from the truth where this debut album is concerned. Electro funk is the name of his game, and there is a mass of vocoder to go with it – which does mean the music can come across as machine soul rather than the real thing. Because of that some of the instrumental tracks are more effective – but songs like ‘Stay Together’, drenched in layers of vocoder, still work well, tapping into the sort of electronics our friends over the English Channel do so well. ‘Get You Off My Mind’ is great ‘80s-rooted funk, ‘Sharp Shooter’ is a catchy slab of pop while ‘Shem’ reveals a softer underbelly that suits him well. So despite a few reservations on the boasts in the lyrics, Redinho’s come up with a good deal of catchy stuff to mark his debut.
3 out of 5
Reviewed By Ben Hogwood
https://soundcloud.com/nmbrs/sets/redinho-debut-album
