carte blanche

"what's a goon to a goblin?"

Crossing the Gaza Strip of Sexxx Jams Chromeo is Pee Thug and Dave 1: best friends since their Montreal adolescence, virtuoso musicians, walking hip hop encyclopedias, and the only successful Arab/Jew partnership since the dawn of human culture.  As Chromeo, they fuse their penchants for two sorely missed musical genres into a wholly new thing. Pee, the brown-skinned Quebecois street tough, brings analog synth basslines and drum machine wizardry à la Cameo and Prince. Dave, the Semitic bookworm (currently earning his Ph.D. in French Lit at Columbia), contributes melodic tales of urban romance that would make Phil Collins shed a tear. Together, their blend of rigorously catchy song structures, memorable hooks and twirling guitar solos conjures up images of a sophisticated, thugged-out Hall & Oates (except you don’t secretly suspect that they make out). Ps: (Carte Blanche is DJ Mehdi & Ritons darker project, which tunes this one into a serious trancey uptempo with dreamy cut Kleerup chords) Ds.