County Grind is counting down the best local albums in South Florida. Read the rest of the top ten here.
The story behind Judson Rogers' first full-length is chock full of subcultural trivia, travel stories and leaked singles. "Samo" is a reference to both Jean-Michel Basquiat's former tag name and the location of the Greek Tunnel of Eupalinos, for example. Judson wrote some of the album in what he describes as the "beautiful" local climate and the rest of it while working on an apple orchard in North Carolina. All of it fed gems like "Ants" and the whirring, danceable glow of "Call It Home."
With such a palette of colorful influences, playing Samo Milagro on your headphones feels like your ears are gleaming. Sumsun's lush, bounce-heavy rhythms -- perhaps designed for a disco somewhere in space -- are sharply cut here, though he loses none of that head-in-the-clouds dreaminess that defined his preceding singles. "Whales," right at the album's middle point, has a slowly-dropping backbeat reminiscent of Sade, a waterfall of delicately rippling synth, and enough soul to be one of the album's most languid and scorching moments.
Top Track: "Ants"
