I first came across Jeremy Flower’s music with his previous release “The Real Me” which was a producer running amok with weird and wonderful sounds and plenty of vocalists to push the tracks somewhere towards a standard song. With his latest works “Mediated Matter”, the vocalists are sidelined in favour for letting you ride each track in its full mood swing.
“Glass” is a complex beast. With loads of industrial noises and synths slowly rising and falling to a pulsating rhythm and a piano playing the bass underneath as weird clinks and jangles over glass make up the percussion, it’s like a tense cinematic moment stretched over four minutes. It builds and blasts back over and over only to grow bigger each time – it’s a wonderful piece. “Mushtari” strangely sounds exactly like the word does. The percussion is deep and bouncy, the instruments are slightly Eastern with lots of twisted tuning and psychedelic moments. It’s the kind of music you’d find in a daring but trendy documentary on the rain forests. It’s a beautiful and meditative track that makes “Synthetic Apiary” all the more creepy. It’s metallic synths, bleeps and lack of organic instruments among the disembodied tones and beats give off a deeply rooted dangerous tone. At the same time it also feels cavernous and wonderous. Only LTO seems to be able to pull off these kinds of abstract tracks in the same vein.
“Glass 2” takes the same chord progressions as the original Glass track but shifts the focus around so it’s more tuneful, and focused on the drums and more bowed sounds. It makes the track feel less like it’s about to stab you in the heart, but rather provide a stairway journey for you to climb or ascend. In the context of the album, it makes a lot of sense to revisit a piece and see it in different light if you’ve undergone a transformative state. “Silk Pavilion” closes out the release with a piece that seems to amplify really small sounds into beats and caresses. There is a melody there, but it slowly twirls in slow motion behind the wagon wheels of abstract percussive loops and sci-fi synths that take centre stage.
Jeremy Flower’s has created a purposeful and unique EP with Meditative Matter. Everything feels bigger and larger than life, yet also quiet alien as you visit different soundscapes. It’s a dream state I intend to visit over and over again and I urge you to do the same.
Recommended Track : Mushtari