Available on: Sonic Router LP
Sonic Router have made the transition from blog to label with impressive ease, having established a reputation for giving a platform to new and unusual talent. After a detour onto UK dancefloors with Wattville’s We Jostle EP, Oli Marlow’s imprint returns to the odd corner of the hip-hop / noise underground that gifted us Torus for its third release. Little is known about Hav Lyfe, although he seems to have close ties to Brighton ambient operator WANDA GROUP. Presented here are ten pieces of rough-edged loop music, sometimes coalescing into hip-hop forms, sometimes remaining in the abstract. As a formula it invites comparisons with Belgium’s Vlek and Surf Kill labels – there’s a similar tendency to stray from halting rhythm into hazy ambience, and a similar bedroom-bound sense of scale on display.
These 10 tracks are defiantly sketch-like, tending to ruminate on a single idea rather than getting hung up on development. Their resultant aimlessness can be either beguiling or frustrating, depending on the quality of the material at hand. ‘Civivic’, filthy and stumbling as if wading through swampland, doesn’t quite justify its length; ‘My Man Kelly Moon From The Gavin’ and the suitably aqueous ‘Ocean Terrace’, meanwhile, have a blissful cracked-VHS vibe that demands repeat listening.
The beatless outings are more intriguing. Opener ‘bb’ could almost be an advertising ident gone haywire, its spiraling figures overwhelmed by a mulchy bassline in the second half. ‘Dion2Cool’ pairs bombastic drum fills with odd, garbled speech-like noises – is that crying or laughing at the end? – in a manner both playful and sinister. ‘U Aint Bout Dat Lyf’’s furtive, grainy tuned percussion loop, at one point interrupted by a muffled cough, is oddly affecting, while ‘No Title 22’ is gorgeous meditative synth minimalism gone subtly awry.
What binds all of these tracks together is the producer’s urge to disrupt and deconstruct: samples veer drunkenly off-pitch, stutter out of time or drop out abruptly to reveal what lies behind them; harmonious textures are frequently peppered with dissonance, as if we’re being warned not to get too comfortable. As a strategy it’s appealing, but here it’s erratically applied, sometimes enhancing a track, sometimes seeming to derail it. Hav Lyfe feels diaristic rather than painstakingly arranged, making for an artistic statement of variable quality. Still, the attentive listener will find that it harbours plenty of quiet delights.
