In the 11 years after Fatima Yamaha released the 2004 single “What’s A Girl to Do,” the whimsical electro-house tune became a cult club favorite. With its earworm hook and gradual build, the song became a dancefloor staple, particularly in Glasgow, and it was a rare night out that didn’t feature its signature hook floating over a sweaty crowd. Its sneaky catchiness, plus the anonymity of its creators, propelled the mysterious entity to popularity. No one knew who “Fatima Yamaha” was, and the original pressing of the song featured a girl on the cover. Then Fatima Yamaha played a set at Dekmantel 2015, and was revealed to be Dutch producer Bas Bron. With this, the spell broke.
His 2015 breakthrough album Imaginary Lines offered more of the same synth-based dreamy electro as “What’s A Girl to Do,” but felt more like pastiche than the genuine article. Follow-up Spontaneous Order was five years in the making, and represents an about-face from the detached cool that brought Fatima Yamaha its slow-burning fame. Instead, the album offers an over-the-top confection of Daft Punk-esque synth keyboards, tight funk beats, and heavily filtered vocals.
Spontaneous Order revels in its campiness, and many tracks here feature cheesecake-rich melody lines that take the songs skyward. Opening track “Drops in the Ocean” features life-like water droplet sounds that mark the downbeat, and a synth melody soars over the top before Sofie Winterson’s vocal feature enters, layered thick with effects. It gathers pace before it’s saved from its own silliness by that signature Fatima Yamaha squelchy bass. “Bar-Bodega ‘That’s It!’” opens with a sharp four-on-the-floor beat before zipping into cheerful bouncing chord stabs and an obnoxiously confident synth melody. The slowed-down “We Are Drops” sneaks into power-ballad territory, with its heavy-handed drums the and shamelessly empty lyrical platitudes (“We’re drops, we’re drops/Together alone, we’re drops”) sung in falsetto by Bron before building to an echoing, spacious climax.
Elsewhere on the album, Bron is subtler. The breakbeats and juddering melody of “Monderman” are a far cry from the up-beat funk of the rest of the album; its chords are transposed up and down the scale as the track progresses, generating patterns from randomness. “Master Zhuang” begins with a booming bass and squelching drums before a blipping, jaunty synth melody pulls it into the realm of vintage video game soundtracks. The title Spontaneous Order is a nod to the accumulating and random set of circumstances that first brought Bron recognition as Fatima Yamaha. To replicate the alluring mysteriousness of “What’s A Girl to Do” would only be disappointing; instead, Bron has created an album that’s shameless in its poppy sensibilities and that doesn’t try to be cool.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.