Sometimes you just want tunes that remind you of memory-holed soundtracks from early PS2 games that you rented from GameFly back in the day. You don’t even remember what these games were like, but you vaguely remember shades of its soundtrack. Summer break. The time limit is zero. That’s what I felt like I’ve found on this Sean La’Brooy album, There’s Always Next Year, out now via Melbourne’s Analogue Attic Recordings. The entire album is a groove and a great way to spend the last remaining hot days of the year soaking in.

The song begins like the genesis of a pleasant dream. Wafts of saxophone and washes of synth drift ashore like a sea breeze. Slowly a beat starts chipping in, with watery piano bending whichever way it wants (a signature of early 00s game soundtracks – a bendy piano). The saxophone becomes more pointed in its delivery, no longer content at just letting things float along. Suddenly a more electronic backdrop percolates forward, again with bendy, almost tubular stabs of synth egging on the listener to grind some kind of rail in a graffiti-filled sewer.

Parts of it remind me of the idyllic pop miniatures of Domenique Dumont, while the bending electronics and their y2k-era aesthetics bring me to the 2021 CFCF album. It’s a delightful late summer listen, one I’m happy I stumbled upon when I did, as NYC plunges into yet another heat wave.

Sean La’Brooy’s There’s Always Next Year is out now via Analogue Attic Recordings. Listen more + buy via Bandcamp below.