Label: LuckyMe Released: December 2020
Canadian electronic producer Jacques Greene presents ‘Thaw’ as part of the LuckyMe advent series, where you can purchase a different track each day leading to Christmas, donating whatever you’d like. This release comes in the wake of his latest full length release Dawn Chorus, released originally in 2019 and this year re-packaged as a deluxe featuring an entire albums worth of remixes. Notably for me, Jacques remixed Radiohead’s Lotus Flower on their 2011 TKOL RMX 1234567, a project that saw me through a tough break up.
I chanced upon this wonderful release by the way of my endless search for music you can smoke, think and fuck to, and as the end of the year approaches, I find myself pleasantly lulled by the repetitive comfort of Jacques Greene’s less rigid Electronic music. I am grateful to be in a world where polyrhythm, analog and R&B have amalgamated via various valves of a splintered musical landscape.
Whilst we are fairly saturated with study music that will never either truly rouse or relax us, I crave something that sparks a deeper catalyst between the post endorphin hits of my pleasures and the penchant I have for integrity in music.
Thaw features strange arpeggiations, immaculate filtering and a classic R&B vocal. The vocal isn’t typically structured or even overly developed yet provides a necessary human element that keeps it just out of the purely instrumental lane.
The introduction features sounds so sensitive it sounds like someone dragging their finger across the lip of a wine glass. With a resounding but not intrusive synth line and well placed snaps and dabs of rhythm, this work is simply beautiful, possessing everything I require to be worthy of the moniker bedroom frequencies. This is the art of never adding more merely out of stylistic loyalty, familiarity or need for relativity. Thaw is seamless and achieves an objective of charming intelligent audible ease.