Miaoux Miaoux – School of Velocity

“Oh my god. It really is beautiful,” croons Julian Corrie – aka Miaoux Miaoux – on a track named Luxury Discovery. Both the statement and the song title, for anyone previously unfamiliar with Corrie’s work, will soon feel entirely appropriate: School of Velocity, his second album, is a precisely pitched, space-age evoking body of work. At turns demandingly hyperactive and eyes-shut mellowed, the record snips and steals from the worlds of electronica, bringing its findings to a base that is classic pop through and through.
  
Tracks like Giga Shrug and Unbeatable Slow Machine are fluid, seductively elastic in a manner indubitably Prince-like, but self-aware at every turn. It’s The Quick is a misbehaved, deceptively formidable dancefloor monster that’s explicitly designed to make you sweat. Peaks Beyond Peaks might start out all sweetly-tongued, but builds until you’re in the middle of a trance-led labyrinth with no memory of how you got there. Corrie’s producer background is self-evident in every lush distortion, but his ability to tease out textured complications from familiar songwriting origins renders School of Velocity a possible classic-in-the-making. Compact, visionary and luxurious.