At long last, it's finally here. After two years of waiting, New York's Anthony Naples is ready to finally reveal his debut full-length LP, Body Pill, set for release on February 17th on Four Tet's Text Records. To coincide with the announcement, Naples has made 'Refugio,' the first single from the LP available. Listen to the full track here.
It's a amazing how much can happen in a short time frame. At the beginning of 2012, Anthony Naples didn't have a song to his name; by the end of that year, he'd been heralded as one of the city's rising producer talents. The genesis was 'Mad Disrespect' — a single that dominated Brooklyn's underground electronic music scene from even before its offical release. The track was a milestone for all involved. Not only was it Naples' first single, but it also was the first track he'd recorded, period. On a whim, he sent the track to Eamon Harkin and Justin Carter, the founders of New York's respected Mister Saturday Night series. A regular at their parties but an unknown to the duo, Anthony caught the pair's attention with 'Mad Disrespect,' and ended up as the cornerstone of label's inaugural release: the Mad Disrespect EP.
Anthony's music caught the ear of a number of people that summer, none more important than Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet, who commissioned Anthony to remix his single '128 Harps' — again, Anthony's first remix at that point. From there on, things sped up. He followed 'Mad Disrespect' with a series of 12' released on a veritable who's who of influential labels: Scotland's respected Rubadub label, Four Tet's Text Records, Opal Tapes — all of which culminated in El Portal, his EP for Will Bankhead's Trilogy Tapes imprint. Along the way, he was invited to open for Four Tet at London's Fabric and invited to play Berlin's prestigious Panorama Bar.
And now, a little over two years later, comes Body Pill, Anthony Naples debut full-length for Text Records. As Anthony tells it, the title comes from a mangled English translation that caught his eye in a Japanese vending machine. 'When I ran the title past Kieran, and he said it just sounded like a lost rave classic, but I thought in the end it makes sense. The LP is a small dose of synthetic noises and rhythms.' Naples says. Stylistically, the album draws inspiration from the city that gave Anthony his start: New York. '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.'
Body Pill is a surprising album for Anthony, his most understated and mature release to date. Body Pill opens with a wall of ambient noise on 'Ris,' only to be overtaken by an a modest synth groove. Ambient noise washes over and eventually overtakes tracks like 'Way Stone' and 'Pale' later on in the record. But that's not to say there aren't echoes of Naples' work for Mister Saturday Night lurking throughout the record. 'Abrazo' feels like the natural companion to Anthony's earlier singles, with elegant strings mingling with a deconstructed house-inspired beat. 'Used to Be' is arguably Anthony's largest beat to date whose rolling hi-hats counterbalance the track's stabbing synths. The album's closer 'Miles' abruptly morphs from a lo-fi house anthem into a surprisingly minimal synth soundscape, a microcosm of the record as a whole.
