Mendo – Avalon (PROMO)

David Mendo’s debut album ‘Avalon’ packs for the Balearics with a one-way ticket to the White Isle. With endurance-testing tribal house and funk-flicking club comforts, Mendo is towelling down the throbbing perspiration he causes, applying body glitter with disco sprinklings (‘Fever’) and driving deep and funky house deliverance that has made his sound cross-continental. The head of the Clarisse label leads from the front as he continues to reap A-list blessings, having given his gift of groove to prestigious mark-makers such as Cadenza, Rekids, Saved, Get Physical and Defected.

Close to 100 minutes long and having marinated since 2010, The Club Science connect who’s had releases evacuate racks since the turn of the Millennium doesn’t do flashes in pans. It’s a given that he should ease into his 2013 LP with the expectant opener ‘Mintro’, chanting as a raver-enlisting ritual. Carried over into the global aroma of the Carla Krevey-shaped ‘Abstract’, a reflection of Mendo’s own cosmopolitan background takes deep house from Spanish backstreets to a nerve-fraying theatre of shady glances. The road to ‘Avalon’ then starts to both wind and unwind, an exotic air (‘Clavelito’) displaying the motif of dance music as international language, even if the harder nosed ‘Everybody Love’ wants the funk for keeps. From beach hut to ballroom, ‘Rising Sun’ just has to be an Ibiza staple: piano remains king as it gets you moving a little closer to a blue skied cloud nine, along with the similarly self-explanatory ‘Samba’.
Then, ‘Waterborne’, making you walk a crystal-edged tightrope between breath-catching and breath-taking, sees Mendo’s expanding outlook approach the panoramic, extended further on the surefooted spacewalk ‘Interlude’ and the follow-up beam-up of the title track, where the sweaty, buoyant masses join moist palms and sway from side to
side, to zero (gravity) in on the album’s continuing theme of inclusion. ‘Amazon’ and ‘Libellule’, tilting you back while stopping short of placing cucumber slices over your eyes, are part of
a support group for when you’re done dribbling out of every pore. Checking the LP’s flow, the expansive sweep over arenas and into the nooks of backrooms makes cohesively appreciable sense. Where you imagine Mendo lining up his famed four deck set-up like the most meticulous of domino rallies, the gaps are measured so methodical motions
link easily into unrelenting circuits that are cause for sprinkler systems to go off, or for punters to turn a pool party into a riptide.
A chain reaction of bass-pushed loops and Iberian ivories, Mediterranean mastery and NYC nous, ‘Avalon’ should
have no problem befriending your hip-bone, as the likes of the infectiously incessant ‘La Krika’ and ‘Les Clochers de
Belarus’ get sand between your toes while telling daybreak to wait.

Artist Mendo
Title Avalon
Genre Tech House / Deep House
Label Clarisse Records
Catalog# CR036
Released 11-2013
Play Time 97:36 min
Total Tracks. 14

1. Abstract Feat. Carla Krevey ( 7:27)
2. Amazon ( 5:30)
3. Avalon ( 9:03)
4. Clavelito ( 8:13)
5. Everybody Love ( 7:58)
6. Fever ( 8:16)
7. Interlude ( 2:41)
8. La Krika ( 7:25)
9. Les Clochers de Belarus ( 8:38)
10. Libellule ( 5:28)
11. Mintro ( 4:26)
12. Rising Sun ( 7:44)
13. Samba ( 8:49)
14. Waterborne ( 5:58)

Total Playtime: 97:36 min