Clever electronic music is the forte of Ned Beckley, the man behind the moniker Lower Spectrum. In 2014 he released what would turn out to be my favourite EP of the year in the form of Traces. It established what some had known for a long time, that Beckley was going to be a force to reckon with in Australian electronic music and very likely on a global scale over the next few years. His ‘every piece in its place’ approach lends itself to perfectly shaped rhythms with immaculate sounds all layered across just the right frequencies to make for unexpectedly danceable tracks.
His forthcoming New Haze EP is on its way but in its vanguard comes the single Proxima, a thundering titan that combines thin vocal samples and obese synth sections, strings and harps with runnable drum tracks. The single has its corresponding music video now which you can scope out below and which was always going to be fairly excellent given Lower Spectrum’s penchant for excellent visual accompaniments.
To mark the occassion of the new EP on its way, we asked Ned to select for us a handful of the songs that were affecting him lately. He went deep picking some Cool Accidents favourites like David August and Rival Consoles and then a whole bunch that we weren’t initially familiar with. It’s worth the dig if you haven’t been acquainted, there’s some real gold in this playlist. We asked Lower Spectrum what he looked for in the music that he listened to: “Acts such as Weval, David August and Rival Consoles continue to push forward-thinking styles that sound individually themselves. I always yearn for the feeling in music when a producer bears their soul, they lay everything on the table and present a piece of themselves to the world, whether it's dark, simple, complex, painful, sad. Whatever. You can always tell a well crafted tune."
-Tommy Faith of Sound Doc for Cool Accidents
Proxima is available on iTunes & Spotify, now | https://spoti.fi/1Ryfx5y | https://apple.co/1LXjQ3a
