REVIEW: Lapalux – 'When You’re Gone' EP

When You’re Gone is Lapalux’s first release on Flying Lotuses’ Brainfeeder imprint (I rambled enthusiastically about their 2012 Sampler a few weeks back). It’s significant: that label’s blend of backroom and bedroom, worms its way through the whole release.

In a nutshell, Lapalux takes the layering possibilities of digital production and embraces them, to intoxicating and occasionally thrilling effect. The greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts production piles shapeshifting melodies on top of jerky percussion on top of warped snatches of samples. It’s a vogue approach in electronic production at the moment, but Lapalux carries it off with the tasteful restraint of a master craftsman.

This restraint makes When You’re Gone a dynamic ‘journey’. The highs are enormous, and the lows are entrancing. Opener ‘102 Hours of Introductions’ slowburns from silence into an ambient wash and finally a woozy beat. ‘Moments’ follows up with what you think is an early morning slow jam, guest vocalist Py crooning sweetly. That’s until a buzzing bassline enters, skewing her words into deformed moans. The ghostly wail continues through ‘Gone’, which sounds like a séance gone right.

The EP finishes off with the one-two punch, in a sense, of ‘Gutter Glitter’ and ‘Face Down, Eyes Shut’. The former is already one of my favourite tracks of the year, a track that grabs you for four minutes and won’t let go, twisting and flowing all the way. The latter is a soothing ambient antidote to the peaks and drops before it, a meditation to ease the EP to a stop.

When You’re Gone is a refined entry into the Brainfeeder canon, and into this whole crazy post-dubstep/neo-soul/chillwave/future beats scene. It doesn’t need to tug at your attention with bass drops or energetic rapping. It’s music to fall asleep to, and I mean that in a good way.

Words by Matt Nielson.

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