Al Lover is a DJ. Kind of a psychedelic one and through his work and reworkings of garage and psych bands and also his collabs with those artists, he has forged a unique career path which has seen him become official DJ for the Desert Daze festivals.
With his latest work "Existential Everything" he has arguably brought all the threads of his unique vision together to bring forth his best work to date. An air of existential dread is certainly present on these tracks but it provides atmosphere rather than a depressive pall. The other striking thing to note is the heavy trap and hip hop influence which weaves its way in via the beats and these percussive elements and transported sounds actually lift the whole thing rather than sounding incongruous.
The outstanding "Heavy Rain In Visual Fields" and "Hubris In Real Time" are testament to this. Most tracks are pop song length with two extended workouts and whilst the blurb describes the album as 'sprawling' I find it to be a richly focused piece of work. Listened to as a whole it becomes an immersive listening experience. "Haunted Trap House" lets the synths run riot over submerged beats and "Reverberating Gymnasium" does a similar thing with trap hats.
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The album fits well with other work by electronic artists who are subverting old genres and sounds to create new forms of ambient, for example Lee Bannon. Final track "Electric Meat" is eight minutes of fire so let's call that a barbecue.
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