Track Reviews // Mildlife - How Long Does It Take?


Single (Heavenly Recordings, 12th  April 2019)

This is Australia’s Mildlife flexing their holistic muscle and making you move. Each arpeggiated solo overlapping and outstretching a hand to find its sonic counterpart in the mix, all of them collapsing into the locomotive 21st Century rhythm bed. Each element circles the drain of the rhythm section’s reducing simplicity, laying down a disco groove that’s taken up sporadically by the synths and pipes.

The melodic motifs layer up in the middle section recalling Joe Zawinul and Phil Spector in the way they coax the band into a polyrhythmic frenzy and mingling ‘til every nook is filled with oscillating, harmonious sound. In a live setting this modern jazz model of duality – steadily breathing samples and walking bass creating solid ground for each member to fire off tangentially – creates a prismatic atmosphere that’s lit live venues for outfits from The Comet is Coming  to BadBadNotGood; and Mildlife do it so well.

Rightfully they hail this as their “homage to the dance floors and clubbers” that ignite their live sets. ‘How Long Does It Take’ is an Italo-Disco banger that falls out of Mildlife’s numeric template but only serves to salivate those waiting for a debut album. It’s a retro-futurist Fender Rhodes jam that nails down the group’s focal position in the emergent modern jazz scene.

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