Electronic music artist and producer Anthony Naples has had one of the more interesting biographies I’ve come across in recent memory. At the beginning of 2012 Naples hadn’t written a single piece of music but by the end of that year, he had been considered one of the NYC’s up-and-coming talents after the release of his first single “Mad Disrespect.” The single caught the attention of Eamon Harkin and Jesse Carter, the founders of the Mister Saturday Night party and as a result, he later released his debut EP, Mad Disrespect.
During the summer Naples won the attention of renowned electronic producer and artist Kieran Hebden, best known Four Tet, who commissioned Naples to remix "128 Harps.“ Naples, then followed the Mad Disrespect with a series of 12 inches released through several influence electronic music labels including Rubadub, Four Tet’s Text Records and Opal Tapes – and it ended with the release of the El Portal EPwhich was released through Will Bankhead’s Trilogy Tapes imprint. He then ended the year opening for Four Tet at the famed London club Fabric and a set at Berlin’s prestigious Panorama Bar.
2015 will mark the release of Naples full-length debut, Body Pill, which Four Tet’s Text Records will release next month. Named after a mangled English translation on a Japanese vending machine that Naples came across, the album according to Naples draws inspiration from New York; in fact, Naples has publicly mentioned that "I wanted to make a streetwise record that was also solid and simple, like a brick or those weird fluorescent light tubes in the subway. They give off this weird hum that you hear only when you’re alone in the station between trains late at night. I wanted to make a record that evoked that experience.”
The album’s latest single “Abrazo” is comprised of shimmering synths, skittering percussion and brief bursts of cascading keyboards in a fashion that reminds me quite a bit of Octo Octa‘s Between Two Selves – in other words the track has a bracingly icy feel which connects contemporary electronic production with old school house but with a soulful feel.
