Kenton Slash Demon - The Schwarzschild Solution Part I

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  • If internet music culture has proven anything, it's that democracy sometimes has its downsides. While the torrent of promos, Soundcloud pages and Beatport playlists means there's seemingly more music than ever to discover, the sheer ease of digital distribution threatens to have a negative effect on overall quality. The fact that anyone can hit send and e-mail blast the world with their latest bedroom production can sometimes make the task of finding worthwhile gems actually harder rather than easier. Coming across a relatively-unknown artist like Denmark's Kenton Slash Demon and finding that they've crafted something solid and original can make it all worthwhile. "Sun," the first installment in the duo's proposed Schwarzschild Solution trilogy, uses processed instruments to create a driving slab of emotive disco house. A patchwork quilt of hazy, glistening samples where repetitive loops suddenly give way to tantalizing wisps of sound—a vocal gasp here, a drumstick roll there—keep the ears in a pleasant state of surprise. It offers that aesthetic experience of hearing the many become the one: clearly disparate sound sources summoned together into a remarkably effective whole. The tune's sampledelic production style combined with its evocative mood should grant it easy appeal to fans of artists who traffic in similar territory such as Tensnake, The Field and Gold Panda. On the flip, Portable's remix is an example of how to navigate sameness and difference when reworking someone else's track. It both makes creative use of the original source material and adds wholly new elements, most notably a layer of downpitched vocals repeating the title in a yearning yet meditative melody that opens the scene. The tune's original sample flashes to the surface only for a moment before being low-pass filtered so that a soulful acid bassline seemingly lifted directly from a Mr. Fingers record can wobble into the foreground. Here Portable's arguably pulled off a kind of remix at times more difficult than conjuring up a radical rework. As a result, they're quite a nice pair, but the fact that these tracks celebrating blissed-out solar worship are being released as August's dog days approach probably doesn't hurt either.
  • Tracklist
      A Sun B Sun (Portable Remix)
RA