Jason Calhoun - revelations of divine love (Dear Life) [Electronic Music]
- The Slow Music Movement
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Jason Calhoun is a man about musical Philadelphia town and a machine-tinkering electronic music producer with a refreshingly singular take on the genre. He's also no stranger to TSMM's pages, having made the blog a couple of months ago with an early teaser for this, his new album, which just dropped.
The tasters for the LP promised an idiosyncratic listen and they weren't wrong. It's also one of those odd albums that lacks anything approaching a single; you know, those tracks beloved of record labels that are that bit hookier, grooving or "popular" sounding, and which DJs or a streaming service editorial playlist might pick up on. And that's OK. The album consists of fourteen passages; most are under two minutes long and quite a few nearer the minute mark, which by most standards makes them album-creating filler or main track interludes, and this is part of the album's charm.
But put them all together, and you get a restless, oddly cohesive listen, where flitting between tempos, moods and machine-made musical moments at the drop of a hat is the new normal, and quite possibly the perfect electronic msic soundtrack for our tech-induced ADHD, screen-gazing, app-swiping, dopamine-hankering existences, where short videos are the new books, and constantly craved.
Modular synths intermittently bleep and randomly bloop, percussive elements skitter, scurry and crackle; glitches, possible in the existential matrix, abound, leaving no space to contemplate the rapidly shifting sonic sands, societal norms or the Anthropocene, as the more melodic pads and more recognisable noises are woozily effected, distorting our 6.4-inch screen-informed sense of reality further. The lack of identifiable arrangements shifts time under your feet like a snowstorm-induced whiteout, and like the attention-demanding apps that consume our short, precious time on this planet, the album leaves something of an uneasy feeling when it abruptly exits your life, leaving you wanting more and pecking at the play button.
Playlist Companion
Find Calhoun in the Slowtronic Playlist.
