Lower Spectrum

Jul
25
posted by tommy

I couldn’t pick a song from the new Lower Spectrum EP so this is just an all encompassing Lower Spectrum post wherein you opt for full immersion in the five track EP instead of a single track / toe in the water. Highlights? Ohhhh, hard to say really. Probably Cathedral, Levity, Khlever, Nocturnal and Glimmer. So all of them. All the tracks are the best tracks.

This is quite an exceptional EP indeed. It’s six tracks of reasonably pure footwork though the defining strength of the release isn’t in its adhesion to a format, its in the moments that it strays apart. The consistent inclusion of live drums is an inspired production choice, the likes of which we haven’t seen since David Cameron decided to cast Elijah Wood as the main Avatar in the movie Avatar. And that was a long time ago now, so maybe you’re starting to grasp the seriousness with which I’m treating this release. If I learned just one single thing from watching Avatar (and I assure you, I learned several) it’s that our individual decisions can greatly affect the planet that we live on and sometimes even other planets that have more advanced civilizations. So when a fella like old Lower Spectrum (real name Ned Beckley) goes and pops real live tracked drums on his electronic music EP there’s the potential for mountains to be leveled and dynasties to be toppled. At the very least my longstanding dynasty of not listening to Lower Spectrum repeatedly for the past week is now dust. Is now the right time to tell you that those harp sounds on EP opener ‘Levity’ aren’t pulled straight from a sample kit? You heard it true, that’s a real life harp folks. Now you’re starting to get it aren’t you, this outfit is closer to a band than a producer. And by outfit, I mean ‘one guy’. THIS IS CRAZY! Could it all be true? Surely not.

Well, the bad news is that it’s not all true- turns out that drum track isn’t wholly acoustic but if it’s good enough to fool me it’s good enough to receive these mountains of praise. If you truly just don’t have time to listen to this thing from start to finish then I recommend kicking things off with ‘Cathedral’. You better not be won’t be disappointed.

EP is out now through Zero Through Nine, a label that’s proving to be a solid source of forward thinking electronica.

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