We're big fans of Joe McBride's work here at ASIP. Over the years we've seen him avoid any genre stereotypes, venturing into cinematic downtempo as part of Kiyoko, and blending drum'n bass, ambient and dub-step with his debut album on the infamous Apollo, titled Changes in 2015. Switching it up and drawing from a never-ending catalog of influences, it's of little surprise to see Synkro back with another superb release.
Hand in Hand EP, reflects on some of his early influences from the 80's, particularly UK Library records, lifting samples and sounds from those records into completely transformed masterpieces using equipment such as his "trusted Juno-6 / SH101 / JX8P combo with the addition of drum samples via an old akai S2800". The result is a far-cry from what you'd expect to come from such records.
EP opener Vanishing Point harkens back to the works of Boards of Canada, and a Hand In Hand synth line takes the same route as retro-analog manipulators like Com Truise. It's not until track 3, Automatic Response, that you hear more obvious 80's influences - a downtempo slow-jam with sparkling pads and Enigma style background vocals. Red Sky, takes things even deeper and a little more mysterious to round off a great EP.
We've got an exclusive new video for EP opener Vanishing Point below for your enjoyment - a morphing 3D affair from director MW. Here's what he had to say about his accompanying creation for the track:
"With ‘Vanishing Point’ I wanted to create abstract, textural feelings of depth and perspective. While experimenting with these ideas I also tried to play with the audience’s perception of scale, producing visuals which could be interpreted as either macro or micro. Beginning with a live feed of a rotating platter containing a mixture of oils, glitter, sequins and basically anything I could find at craft shops, I processed that feed through several video hardware devices with patched internal feedback loops. This was then fed into VDMX software, which introduced audio modulation and processing. The foreground texture was mapped to a sphere while performing image plane displacement to extend the bright areas inwards or outwards based on the audio input, while the background was produced with mirror effects. This was then recorded, and finally assembled in Premiere Pro". - MW.
Hand In Hand EP is available now on Apollo.
