Machinedrum

Room (S) Machinedrum

Travis Stewart is a producer who’s always been admired by the electronic cognosenti, both solo as Machinedrum and also as one half of Sepalcure (on Hotflush). After a break from producing as Machinedrum he resurfaced in a major way last year with the ‘Many Faces EP’ on LuckyMe label. However, for 'Room(s)', his latest full length on Planet Mu, he’s well ahead of the curve, approaching the album in a way he’s never worked before. The tracks on ‘Room(s)’ were started on the spur of the moment, often whilst traveling, and finished in the studio, with the notion in mind that great moments of inspiration are fleeting so it's best to grab on to that moment when it happens and squeeze it for all its worth. Travis says of this process; "I feel like the energy of a song is lost the longer you spend working on it. This experiment in becoming less attached to my work essentially lead to a lot of songs that are connected sonically and aesthetically." This spur of the moment energy meant that Travis’ productions have turned the 160 bpm footwork conventions inside out. Here he fills the usually fierce, stripped down form with elegant sun kissed and impressionistic songs, built from r & b, autotune and dance music history’s most exuberant stabs and kicks. Building on his background as a hip hop producer, he casually creates a beautiful new kind of high-speed detail-packed mutant pop that, like the early post-rave sounds of ambient jungle, is psychedelic, exhilarating and strangely relaxing in it’s fast-paced washes of synths and drums. The album opens with ‘She Died There’, building incomprehensible looping swirls of cut-up vocal over precise, cool synths and agile kicks and snares. ‘Now U Know Tha Deal 4 Real’ builds a new romantic flavoured synth melody over flat, heavy bass, slowly adding tough diva vocals and layers of warm chords to create something that approximates UK garage in a different matrix. 'Sacred Frequency' marries organ stabs and a catchy psychedelic chorus to cre