Since 2018, Frankfurt-based producer Harry Wills has charted a meteoric rise at breakneck-speed in underground music, alongside what you could call the Sock It To Me collective with Dr Banana, Alec Falconer, and Desert Sound Colony. Whilst the crew originally broke through with a reputation for playing and producing UKG, their individual sounds have encompassed a plethora of genres, and perhaps no one more so than Wills.
The London-born producer hasn’t shied away from sharing his music with as many labels as possible, there have been the zany breaks on Entity, classy, shifting minimal on the 2X series, and pumping tech-house on Body Movement. So a debut, nine-track album to launch his new label feels like the perfect to lay down a marker in a place he can call home, with Luxury Bedtime landing on Nimble.
B2’s ‘Drunk Dialling’ just sounds so quintessentially Wills at this point. The chord progressions have a warmth and friendliness to them that invites you along to dance and once you’re lured in, the zaps and twangs of electrifying hardware pull you from pillar to post in a Wills headspinning classic.
Whilst Wills’ evident talent for quirky and wacky peak-time tracks that pack a punch, Luxury Bedtime showcases a more all-encompassing sound from the Frankfurt artist. The shoulder-shimming ‘Glide’ shows how he can strip things back to simplicity whilst maintaining class with its tiptoeing melody and dainty bass. C-siders ‘Let’s Trance’ and ‘Aquaplane’ make their dancefloor mission obvious but there are fewer obvious delicacies within them. Whilst the former’s punchy drums and snappy snares lend themselves the sound systems of both clubs and bedrooms alike, the glistening and gliding pads are fully deserving of a full-blown acoustic treatment when we’re back in sweaty clubs at 5am.
Perhaps what gets lost whilst Wills is making seriously good dancefloor music is just how good his knack for crafting elegant synths and melodies is. The pads on tracks like Retroflect and the previously mentioned Let’s Trance could easily pass in situations that move well beyond a dancefloor, with Retroflect in particular feeling ready to stand the test of time with its introspective melody that could easily be plucked out of record racks in the mid-90s with ‘TIP!’ stamped on the top.
Grub’s Up is potentially the most intriguing track of the entire album, whilst the overall quirkiness of it falls in line with the rest of his discography, there’s something about it that just feels distinctive from the rest of Luxury Bedtime. The thudding, broken bass drums placed alongside a stunning melody and, hectic hardware sounds could feasibly be three separate tracks stitched into one, but it gives the tip-off that Wills still has fresh musical ideas beyond what he’s already delivered.
Luxury Bedtime is available exclusively over at Ba Dum Tish.
More info on Harry Wills
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More info on Ba Dum Tish
Facebook | SoundCloud | Discogs | Website
