Totally Together

There is a generosity to this track that you notice immediately — it opens with space, lets the instruments find each other gradually, and then settles into a rhythm that feels almost like an extended exhale. Mittoo's keyboard work here carries a quality that might be described as warmth if that word weren't so often used carelessly; it is warm the way a specific room is warm, the way afternoon light through a particular window feels different from light elsewhere. The title makes a kind of philosophical promise that the music keeps without making a fuss about it — there is a togetherness in the interplay between keyboard, bass, and rhythm guitar that suggests musicians who have logged enough hours together to stop performing at each other and simply play. The tempo sits in the middle range that rocksteady favored, slower than ska but not yet quite reggae's deeper pulse, a pace that allows the melodic details to surface without the track ever feeling static. Mittoo understood that instrumental music depends entirely on the quality of its ideas because there is no lyrical narrative to carry the listener through dull stretches — every phrase has to earn its place. This track would suit a quiet evening when you want music that doesn't demand your full attention but rewards it if you give it, the kind of record that plays in the background of a conversation and then suddenly you find yourself listening instead of talking.