Love & Hate (180g 2LP)

Love & Hate was recorded in LA and London, and produced by Grammy Award winner Brian Joseph Burton AKA Danger Mouse, and young British producer, Inflo.

The album is a fascinatingly assured and resonant body of work, and follows Michael's 2012 debut LP, Home Again. Having introduced himself and that voice to the world in 2011 with the raw soul of 'Tell Me A Tale', Love & Hate is a record that sounds as though it has been unearthed from a long forgotten studio canister in the seventies, but is permeated with a timelessness that defies any artist of any specific era. If the 'death of the album' is still an ongoing conversation, Michael Kiwanuka's new record is a startling, emphatic response to its enduring importance.

Where Home Again provoked comparisons to the likes of Bill Withers and Otis Redding, Michael's new album struts to a much more psychedelic, freeform beat. Its opening number, the peerless ten-minute opus 'Cold Little Heart' evokes the haze of Pink Floyd in its unhurried slow-burn, whilst 'Falling' is a soaring gospel number for the 21st century. There are standout tunes throughout, but really Love & Hate is an album that genuinely deserves to be listened to as one, littered as it is with "headphones moments" that require real attention to the light and shade of its creation.