Craftal - Lullabytes

Art: m_kulago

Brandishing cerebral glitches and phosphorescent tones, Craftal’s Lullabytes is downtempo electronica in the form of a berceuse. Leaving behind traditional dance-centric arrangements, Lullabytes is distinctly amorphic, with tracks ebbing and flowing into one another with marked fluidity.
There’s a particularly granular approach to composition across the LP, and each arrangement resembles a circular journey, as opposed to a linear story. It’s the sort of musical odyssey that exudes narrative, sans any real words, immersing the listener in a potpourri of hues and emotions.
From the precision sound design, to the various modalities and musical amblings, Lullabytes is sure to deliver a cranial massage on par with Craftal’s zeroed-in musicianship.

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Rumpistol - In My Room

Music from the Danish producer Jens Christiansen aka Rumpistol has never been conventional. It was his ability to create experimental yet accessible electronic music that first earned him notoriety over a decade ago. Now, a new five-track collection called In My Room finds the producer leaning ever further into that absence of orthodoxy. In My Room takes artistic risk and combines threads from many electronic styles. It showcases non-linear songwriting, bold textures, and uninhibited array of sonic material. Yet despite Rumpistol’s endless tinkering and flirtations with the edge, In My Room still offers a deeply comforting listening experience. 

Art: Carlin Diaz

Tempos and moods are fluid throughout this release, but the common denominator is a sense of wonder. The sort of wonder surrounding something ultimate and grand that we can’t quite grasp, yet we know is out there. The sort of wonder that surfaces when we’re lost in thought alone in our room. Rumpistol can fit so many distinct, disparate sounds into his music without creating a crowded mix. Each element has room to breathe. In My Room offers another great example of this dynamic. 

In the past several years, Jens has been working with his jazz and world fusion supergroup Kalaha, and maneuvering through the United States’ bass music circuit. The sounds of these two different worlds appear to have heavily influenced In My Room, and as such, it represents a new evolution of Rumpistol’s music.

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5AM - Onward

The smoothest psychedelic sound this side of the Milky Way can be found on Onward, a five track EP from the Philadelphia-based electronic musician 5AM aka Sam Andrus. Onward is the most ambitious effort yet in 5AM’s ongoing journey to blend jazz, funk and R&B with forward-thinking psychedelic bass music. Indeed, listening to Onward feels like lurking about an intergalactic jazz cafe where the atmosphere is electric, eyes are low, and harsh vibrations are checked at the door.

As a composer and arranger 5AM comes off calm and collected yet bold on this release. He flips and flexes sounds to their limits, but there’s no overreach. Complex arrangements of liquid glitches, space-travel synthesizers and weighty basslines somehow render themselves easy for ears to follow. With an obsessive attention to detail, 5AM has earned praise from his peers for immaculate mix-downs. Across Onward, each track is clean and buttoned-up. All sonic elements - vocals, guitar (courtesy of Keith Wadsworth of Wax Future), percussion and righteous keys - fit together like a puzzle.

But qualitative analyses aside, simply plunge into the feel of Onward. The mind, hungry for inspiration and inclined towards adventure, instinctively picks up what 5AM puts down and it becomes apparent: this is a fresh sound and attitude with lasting relevance for the future.

Art: 5AM