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Lorn has earned his position as one of electronic music's most exciting voices. Defiantly original, darkly uplifting and utterly uncompromising, he's the master of a form and a scene unto himself. His second album, 'Ask The Dust,' was a body of work that he threw himself into entirely. Not for him a mere collection of songs and beats, he wanted to make a mission statement, and leave behind a masterpiece. It was as beautiful, complex and fragile as it was infectious and melodic.
His new EP, Debris, is both a continuation and an antidote to that all consuming approach. If 'Ask The Dust' saw him cutting himself off from friends and family and spending long days working, 'Debris' came to him in a furnace blast of inspiration. Not only does this lend the music here a gripping immediacy, there's also a thematic coherence that's startlingly profound.
'I built kits and textures from field recordings,' he says, 'blended them with synths and guitars, ran them back and forth through tape, burned them through analog valves, recorded them playing inside of themselves… Really i wanted them to physically sound like they were picked out of some wreckage. Some lost caravan out in the desert with a crew of zero.'
Opener 'Inverted' combines ocean-deep textures with dislocated rave stabs and punk drums. There's even a drop that reminds you of the time pre EDM, when drops were about genuine drama, and not tooth-jarring, ADD-addled sugar rushes. 'Bury Your Brother' contains rare emotional urgency, its aching strains driven along by crunching drums and deep, dark bass.
Lorn's music is never self-indulgent in its melancholy, and there is always uplift, sunlight breaking through the clouds. Title track 'Debris' is reminiscent of Trent Reznor's marrying of industrial aesthetics to beautiful, electronic melody, a song that grips the listener and drags them deep into its currents. It's a happy drowning, this is an EP that leaves the listener thirsty for more. |
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