SEA LEVELS (LP)

Sea Levels is the brand new EP from Andy Donnelly aka Kloke. A recent graduate of Red Bull Music Academy New York and British ex-pat marooned in Melbourne for the past decade, Donnelly distills the urban groove and bucolic mood of his heritage through the vibrancy of his new environs into a wholly unique soundscape. Following a narrative of apocalyptic tides and the oceanic sublime, Sea Levels sinks into the ambient, house, and techno realms with flashes of two-step, hip hop and dub. It's an idiosyncratic take on British electronic music viewed through the lens of relocation, aided by an arsenal of analog synthesizers, drum machines, and psychotropic effects. Kloke's music exists within a new Bubble Metropolis that inspires shimmering grandeur and water-logged dread rather than urban nihilism. Delicate in its peaceful moments yet conditioned to the inevitable tide, Sea Levels invokes harmony and disarray in equal measures. Mayfield and Room With A View cast quiet hope against the surge that follows Ritual and Flood, both of which storm in fervent opposition to the coral groove of opener Deep City. All harbors of tranquility burst under the shapeshifting whump of Unlearning, a fitting finale for Kloke's first release in two years that dishevels UK-centric tropes into a bristling menace of collisional origins. Sea Levels is available on limited vinyl and unlimited digital on April 21, 2014. The frayed jacket illustration comes courtesy of Calvin Ho, the penman behind Archie Pelago's Hall of Human Origins cover. 1. Deep City 06:33 2. Mayfield 02:38 3. Ritual 03:48 4. Room With A View 02:24 5. Flood 04:09 6. Unlearning 03:29