News Police Academy 6

A lot of being a successful musician appears to be making sure that you’re seen and heard in the right circles, acting in the right manner. It’s all common sense really – if you want listeners of Radio 1 to think that you’re the new best thing on the planet, get a gig at Glastonbury and pay Noel Gallagher to say you’re his new favourite band or whatever. On the other end of the spectrum, if you want a few bored middle class white kids with far too much free time to pay attention to you, it’s probably best if you collaborate with their favourite chillwave artists – and if you’ve been anyone in glo-fi in the past 12 months, it’s almost certain that you’ll have done something with Police Academy 6.

The name, of course, is a nod to a movie franchise that has long since peaked, but the tracks PA6 makes are far from the camp nostalgia it may imply. There are hints of it – early demo Run used a warped sample of Mario 3 to create it’s backbeat, something only really apparent if you’d wasted half of your childhood desperately playing the reskinned and repacked ‘All Stars’ collection on the Super Nintendo. Tellingly, that’s been dropped for the first full-length record, which contains a total of seven other tracks featuring other artists – impressive, given there are only eleven efforts on it overall.

Still, for all the additional talent brought in to aid, every track is still undeniably the work of its creator. The claims that he comes out of Iraq are persistent, but given the hazy, summer-toned lilt of all his work, it’s more likely that Police Academy 6 spends their days in Southern California, or somewhere equally sun kissed and stereotypically laid back. When you listen to an artist with this much nous, it’s easy to appreciate just how misunderstood the chillwave movement has become, with serial clingers on and chancers making the whole endeavour feel like it’s the refuge of the untalented. Here is a man blessed with an ear for beats and the ability craft them together, the sway of the ocean distant in the background, majestic and beautiful.

Police Academy 6 by Police Academy 6