Champyons have released their long-awaited debut album Cha Cha Cha. Inspired by the great collectives of the pop-art and early hip-hop era, Champyons combine electronic, R’n’B, and rock elements to form a combination of pop culture in sound. Their style has a heavy influence of 70s-informed instrumentation and modern production elements centered around singer Kptn’s distinctive voice. Now, only in their mid-20s, Champyons go back more than 15 years. Starting out as a school band in their early teenage years, the trio composed of Kptn (vocals/ keys), Flx (bass/ guitar) and Tweety (drums), continues to grow in their musical prowess. Cha Cha Cha is fourteen songs of sample-cutting, drum-looping and experimental songwriting that is full of their creative evolution of combining classic storytelling à la Leonhard Cohen with smooth contemporary RnB elements. Champyons decided to be fully self-reliant, and to engineer and produce their debut record all by themselves. Building their own custom studio from scratch and with renowned engineer and producer Axel Reinemer (Rihanna, Jason Derulo, Jazzanova) the album mix was completed in mid-2017. At the same time, the trio teamed up with high-profile contemporary artist Michael Sailstorfer who started contributing iconic sculptures as the band’s visual trademark. This is pop music and culture at its finest! That’s the short of it!
Positives:
A nice mix of machine-generated sounds predominate with hip grooves and strong singing by Kptn.
Bottom Line:
All things of interest in pop culture create a groovy, sparkling genre mixing sound of champyons, singer Kptn's voice is soulful and the songwriting is thought-provoking. Pieces of sound are pitched, and distorted or enriched to achieve the sound that is both classic and pop, but most of all fresh. Stylistically the trio always maintains consistency in the flow and style of the pop scheme. The melodies are catchy, multi-layered and Kptn, Flx and Tweety create something that traditional pop bands only hope to achieve, and that is a unique identifiable sound that is musical and leaves genre terms behind.