Leslie Winer
When I Hit You - You'll Feel It

ORANGE MILK RECORDS: ...Drop Shadow is the new album from New Zealand native Luke Rowell, and his first release under the Eyeliner name since 2015’s Buy Now (Beer on the Rug). The album is filled with highly composed MIDI pop music that covers a range of mood and emotion, from the uplifting Vince DiCola-esque opener to the beautiful digital vocal “ahh”s that merge into crashing waves at the end of “Keep Calm”. Rowell is using the language of instrumental dance and pop to express multiple themes, the first being personal loss and caring for a sick loved one, as reflected on the suite of songs from “Contact” to “Carry On”. At the albums center these songs form a sort of emotional core that also reframe lighter pieces like “Coffee News” as mini respites along the way.Drop Shadow also explores Rowell’s fascination with American and Japanese music culture and their many intersections, most evident to me on the upbeat “Drop Shadow” which utilizes the Korg Wavestatoion and M1 VST (which is the highest selling synth of all time in its hardware form) and lands somewhere between early house music, a Madonna instrumental, and something from a Nintendo 64 soundtrack.If the previous Eyeliner album LARP of Luxury can be seen as a sunrise record and BUY NOW as night time music, Drop Shadow goes from morning to night and back again. Songs like “Reverie” can feel bright and head-nodding on first listen, only to shift into a hopeful melancholy the second time through.

ORANGE MILK RECORDS: ...Inspired by fever dreams, in a sense explores the human nature of emotions and narrates a journey of rediscovery. Soundscapes quickly materialize and collapse and melodies become room noise within the blink of an eye. The album challenges many conventions in electronic compositions and questions the desire for familiarity in modern production.

BUTTER SESSIONS: ....The project of Julien Huynh and Will Holden, Hybrid Man returns after releasing four spacious cuts of downtempo breaks and house in 2019. This time debuting on Butter Sessions, the tracks on Shapeshifting feel like a natural progression, equally well-crafted with the DJ in mind but with a slightly more trance influenced modus operandi.Opening with ‘Virtual Language’, the duo seemingly nods in the direction of Richard H. Kirk’s seminal Virtual State album, inspired by the futurism and warm robotic soundscapes of the 90s ambient techno scene. Dub FX and swirling basslines underpin the stylistic make-up of the EP, sharp breaks on the title track recalling 5AM catharsis in a pre-lockdown state of loved up rave bliss.

C. Lavender is a New York based sound artist and sound healing practitioner whose third full-length album explores meditative physical rituals of sound with binaural recordings from inside a geodesic dome in the Catskill Mountains of New York.“The future is a choice between utopia and oblivion,” noted architect, futurist and geodesic dome theorist Buckminster Fuller. Myth of Equilibrium delves into these divergent paths by featuring equal parts of pastoral raw acoustic percussion combined with C. Lavender’s signature “devastating caustic drones” (Ad Hoc) via her custom bass guitar and synthesizers.An assistant to the late pioneering electronic composer and Deep Listening founder Pauline Oliveros, C. Lavender’s astute editing and the binaural recording process places the listener within the heady fluctuating underworld she has created on this album. The recording environment of the geodesic dome allowed for sounds to transfer out beyond the confines of the walls as well as allowing outside sounds from the surrounding wilderness to permeate in like that of a mutating cell. The album suggests “headphone listening” for the full hypnotic experience Myth of Equilibrium presents to the listener.C. Lavender is a 2020 Pioneer Works (New York) Music Artist-in-Residence.