Making his debut on Apollo Detroit native Simple (or Konstantin Papatheodoropoulos as he’s known to his friends) steps up with six of the warmest, soulful tracks we’ve heard in some time. With previous release on Ilian Tape (DE), Produkt Schallplatten (DE), Poisonous Gasses (US) and his own label, Two Circles, Simple has consistently shown himself to be an artist of high calibre, who’s approach to his craft is as devoted as it is refreshingly unpredictable.

Weaving a patchwork quilt of found sounds, pops, clicks and tape hiss and marrying these with the warm textures of distorted rhodes, pitched down vocals, resonant drones and bumpy percussion, Simple arrives at a sound based on what he himself calls ‘happy accidents’ - with a heavy emphasis on improvisation - but, such is his musical ability and knowhow (he studied audio engineering at San Francisco State university) that the overall effect is tracks which sound immaculate, complete, intended.

There’s a rhythmic freedom and dexterity in Simple’s music that touches on the skittery approach favoured by the pioneers of forward thinking hip hop and r&b, particularly on You Used To, but throughout these six tracks he shows off a range of tempo and groove that leave the listener in no doubt of his complete grasp of the rhythmic fundamentals.

The church of Simple’s influences would appear to be broad, Barely Together comes over like a broken version of a lost track from Miles Davis’ mid eighties LP Tutu, Simple displaying his love (and understanding) of jazz in the arrangement and feel; Felt and Cognac is an ultra-slow skewed ballad echoing post-millennial R&B smiths such as The Weeknd - with minimal instrumentation, driven by an alienated vocal and resting on minimal plushly dampened drums.

What ties all of Simple’s music together is it’s warmth, both sonically - through it’s soft analogue distortion and slight lopsidedness - and artistically, too - you can hear the heart and soul of the artist beating and yearning throughout. There is an honesty and bravery in this age of hyper produced, cookie-cutter music, quantized and compressed to within an inch of it’s life, for an artist to stand and declare that theirs is music derived from accidents and mistakes, and this is exactly what Simple does. As he himself puts it: ‘The best noise comes from the most unlikely of places’, and when the resulting music is this good, there’s no argument.