On-the-rise dance auteur releases stellar debut album
Over the past five years, Levon Vincent has emerged as one of dance music’s most exciting figures with a string of well-received single releases. On Feb. 9, Vincent dropped his self-titled debut album online – with the LP finally receiving a physical release at the beginning of this month. Approaching techno with a concept album-level ambitiousness, Vincent surprisingly meets his goals and strikes the ball out of the park.
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Part of an apparent trend of cohesive electronic music LPs of considerable depth and atmosphere, Levon Vincent’s self-titled album is an exciting, fully-realized effort.
Vincent’s album commences with “The Beginning,” which starts as a bouncy electro number before washes of ambient sound and rattling percussion enter to make for a more layered track. Following this opening, Vincent gives us “Phantom Power,” where a boneheaded bassline is augmented with ambient washes of sound and swirling keyboards reminiscent of early Aphex Twin. Side B longplayer “Junkies on Herman Street,” meanwhile, is as dark as its title suggests, an industrial track, which sounds like an assembly line from hell with cicada-like sounds and touches of organ to add to the sinister atmosphere.
…Vincent balances club-oriented tracks with more ambient and experimental interludes…
Lest Vincent tire us with an atmosphere of oppressive darkness, the producer switches things up on Side C’s “Launch Ramp to the Sky.” With its percolating bassline and hissing hi-hats, the track provides listeners with a much-needed excursion into more club-friendly and uppity fare. Subsequently, on “For Mona, My Beloved Cat. Rest in Peace,” Vincent treats us to something entirely different – a lovely piece of prog-ambient music with shimmering synths and aquatic-sounding bass stabs.
The album’s predominantly grey atmosphere settles in again on the final D-side track “Her Light Goes Through Everything,” a sombre slowburner with a sparse arrangement featuring a subterranean bassline, ascending keyboard motif, and dubby sound effects. Topping off the album’s E side, Vincent gives us another standout with “Confetti,” sampling breathing and gurgling noises over an off-kilter keyboard riff and pounding drum to create a track, which oozes sexuality from every pore.
Living up to its title, “Anti-Corporate Music” cycles a sample of what sounds like an object being shuffled around and adds touches of white noise and treated keyboard, while the combination of strings in “Small Whole-numbered Ratios,” also featuring an unrelenting drum beat, give it an almost anthemic quality. Album closer “Woman is an Angel,” meanwhile, might as well function as a latter-day version of Daft Punk’s “Alive.” The track features a descending synth riff, low-in-the-mix beat, and array of sampled sounds, which summarize everything we have heard so far, while simulatenously dialing us out into infinity.
Though historically techno DJs and producers have opted for the single as their medium of choice, the past 15 to 20 years have seen an increased interest in the possibilities of the full-length release. On his self-titled debut, Levon Vincent balances club-oriented tracks with more ambient and experimental interludes – creating an album that achieves both variety and a tour-de-force unity. Though claims of “Best dance album of the year” are obviously a tad premature in March, Levon Vincent remains one of the most impressive EDM records to have come out over the past three months.