Robbie & Mona - Tusky

Robbie & Mona’s new album begins how others might choose to end theirs: with a grand, twinkling slow dance. ‘Sensation’ is cavernous and conclusive, its emotions drained and gathering in pools on the floor. It’s with this sense of fatal melodrama and exquisite spectacle that Bristol-hailing duo William Carkeet and Ellie Gray ground their operations. Embracing the grandeur of cinema (William has a side line in film soundtracks), ‘Tusky’ provides an ornate and engrossing listen of ambitious proportions. At one moment, it’s flaunting a candlelit romance of sweaty-hot saxophones and upright pianos as on the waltzing swing- jazz of ‘Flauneral’. Next, we’re served up coldly programmed synth-pop futurisms - check the overwhelming crystalline purity of ‘Sherry Prada’, or the shimmering dream-raves of ‘Clapback’. Then there are disorientating moments where ‘Tusky’ tosses us side-to-side between aesthetic extremes: ‘Dolphin’ serenades with a cathedral choir before an onslaught of extreme electronic abrasions subverts the elegant and glitches the beautiful. As intimate and sultry as a slow wet kiss, yet as cool, and expansive as a starlit sky, Robbie & Mona have crafted a remarkable, multi-edged record that twists, turns and simply delights with the sheer breadth of its creative vision.