- A downtempo adventure that features some of Levon's most emotionally gripping music.
- Levon Vincent may be dance music's most sincere producer. This is true of everything from his effusive social media posts to his Bandcamp store where he sells his music under the heading "LOVE." Sincerity is also the hallmark of his music. Listening to his records, packaged with hand-scrawled artwork and warm melodies, can sometimes feel like you're stumbling on someone's Post-It notes.
The centerpiece of his self-titled album, "For Mona, My Beloved Cat, Rest in Peace," is a masterclass in this sort of intimacy: cloud swept synth lines flicker across the stereo spectrum over a groove built from the gentle brush of snares. Even by these standards, though, Vincent's newest LP, Silent Cities, feels like his most intimate. "For Mona," though a touching homage to his cat, was also an excellent piece of second-wave Detroit techno, balancing the sentimental with the functional. On Silent Cities, Vincent forgoes those rhythms to walk an even finer line between the moving and the maudlin, exploring everything from trap to downtempo and synth pop.
Even without his usual techno tics, the feelings and moods on display should be familiar to any Levon Vincent fan. The ten-minute title track strikes a perfect balance between anxious trap rhythms and astonishing synth work. "Moonlight" also uses hip-hop drums, pairing them with hushed wind instruments that threaten to slip precariously out of tune. If Pixar ever releases an animated film about nuclear winter, the downtempo "Wolves" could be its theme song: the low-end conjures up apocalyptic ruin, but from this barren landscape emerges cartoonish synth line, like a triumphant hero covered in soot and debris.
On more recent records, like 2019's World Order Music, Vincent sounded like the producer who brought us "Man Or Mistress" and "Double Jointed Sex Freak" again. The production on that album was clear and bright, the rhythms low-slung, often cerebral, the melodies always breathtaking. Silent Cities hits similar notes but obscures the pristine skyline with a fog of delay, reverb and gloom. The gossamer melodies of "Tigers" and "Sunrise" are buried in layers of tape hiss, while on "Birds," Vincent attacks his signature synth noodling with some biting sub-bass.
It was always going to be a risky move to leave techno behind but the gamble mostly pays off. But—and there is a big but here—Silent Cities is also a challenging album to break into. The opener "Everlasting Joy" alone could be enough to send techno heads running for the hills. It's a lumbering synth pop behemoth about as subtle as a Soft Cell reunion tour, recalling the lofty aspirations of "If We Choose Peace," the lowest point on Vincent's well-intentioned mixed bag of a 2017 LP, For Paris. Things are equally dicey on "Gattaca," whose panning chords and delayed claps overshoot the sci-fi unease of its namesake and ends up sounding like a trap remix of that ubiquitous hold music song.
That opening stretch aside, Silent Cities is a welcome sidestep into some under-explored territory. Vincent said he wanted the album to expand on "a surprise favorite from my previous LP, a song called 'She Likes To Wave To Passing Boat.'"
That track was wistful and longing, exactly what you'd expect when one of dance music's most emotive producers heads to the chill-out room. What surprises and delights about Silent Cities, however, is that Vincent doesn't settle for the obvious catharsis of "She Likes To Wave To Passing Boats." The emotions here are far more complex. Silent Cities is a murky but polychromatic record that sounds like Vincent returning home and trying to reassemble not the tracks but the feelings he had while out at the club—both the good and the bad.
Tracklist01. Everlasting Joy
02. Gattaca
03. Sunrise
04. Birds
05. Wolves
06. Tigers
07. Mother Earth
08. Moonlight
09. Silent Cities
10. Mother Amazon
11. Sunset