Beers. Hits of the snooze button. Puppies. Consecutive days off work. Some things just come better in pairs. And this year, the twins of Cosmo’s Midnight have certainly gone out of their way to confirm that. The Sydney beatmaking duo premiered their first live performance at OutsideIn Festival this September, playing a set of almost exclusively self-grown tracks; released the official music video for their pre-EP-single Walk With Me, and now they’re about to drop their latest six-track EP, Moments. Also a special mention should probably go to the fact that they’re strong contenders for the most colourful wardrobe in all the southern hemisphere.
Tearing through collaborations like they were born to do it, Cosmo’s Midnight expertly piece together a plethora of sonic expeditions on Moments.
If you asked someone to attempt to box Cosmo and Patrick Liney into a genre, you’d probably be rewarded with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in response. Which, fittingly enough, is exactly how their bio has them described. And the duo’s EP Moments – an electronic-studded journey through the wonders of collaborations – is testament to that as the pair shrugs on and off various sound outfits with chameleonic flair, rollercoastering the listener through a vast and varied soundscape.
Cosmo’s Midnight are versatile in that they manage to assimilate the sound of whichever performance or producer they’re collaborating with like a second skin. But even when these tracks are listened through back to back, there’s never a sense of fragmentation. Picture Scorsese, who’s made it his business to cover almost ever genre going, yet remains fundamentally philosophical – just duplicated, and in computer soundologist form, bent over the decks. Whatever genre they’ve decided to wear that track, there’s always an underlying theme to Cosmo’s Midnight that stitches it all together.
First up on this imaginative exercise of cross-cultural and multi-genred influences is Trapped, steering a super funky kaleidoscopic pop haze with the help of electronic influencer Wave Racer. Walk With Me, the twins’ adventure with KUČKA, is all new age R&B, shimmering a bright and dancey vibe, strewn with delicate keyboard melodies.
Best of all, it comes accompanied by a video of the twins scootering around the neighbourhood in some pretty epic tracksuits (there are also huskies – just go watch it now please). Razor-sharp production is intuitive across all six tracks, and it shines through on Walk With Me, and also within the very precise beats of Ether, their collaboration with Hi Tom.
Snare – a track about entrapping love, obviously – lays out altogether mellower feel, cruising along with laidback vocals from Wild Eyed Boy. These dreamy soundscapes are gleamed in Falling Out too. But in stark contrast, the collaboration with super-producer Lido is structured by skittish beats and occasional glimpses into the cut and paste vocals Cosmo’s Midnight have made their name in. J-pop-textured Hurt is just really, really fun, and comes sugar sweet, laden with cutesy video game bleeps, and English and Japanese vocals courtesy of Sarah Perry from Kero Kero Bonito.
Don’t expect these tracks to have found their final form quite yet though – they’re already expecting the remix treatment from Skylar Spence and KOA, with more, inevitably, to be announced.
Moments is out 4 December.
