The speed of modern life is off the hook. Fuelled by our obsessive and utterly dependant relationship with technology, our days flash by in a blur of emails, text messages, status updates and round-the-clock news services. Sure, we’ve become excellent multi-taskers, but somewhere along the way we’ve lost the ability to simply be. And things are only going to get faster, as the Information Age continues to fashion the next phase of human consciousness.
It’s against this hyper-charged world that chillwave maestro Oliver Tank revolts. With his second, aptly-titled EP Slow Motion Music (following on from his highly-praised Dreams EP of 2011), Tank aims to disconnect from the pace of the modern world, revelling in a chilly brew of floating synths and sparse electro beats. “Slow down world you move too fast for me,” he sings on Different Speed (feat. Ta-Ku). In fact, pretty much every song on the 7 track EP consists of some new meditation on the slowing-down-of-time theme.
It’s a mesmerising listen (and a trip best taken in headphones). Somehow, despite Tank’s compositions drifting along in – dare I say it – slow motion, at no point does the EP drag. If anything it’s the opposite: once you tune into SMM’s wave length, it seems to race by, each song merging seamlessly with the next, the whole thing washing over you in an ambient, dream-like haze. With its introspective, detached atmosphere, and Tank’s FX-laden voice cast way back in the oceanic depths of the music, it does run the risk of coming off as cold. Yet, with his searching lyrics and melancholic voice, Tank manages to turn this into a strange kind of intimacy. It’s as if we’ve been invited into his mind as he wanders the empty pre-dawn streets, every street corner giving rise to a new epiphany.
“Life in real time moves too fast for me,” Tank sings (his voice given the vocoder treatment) on the delicate EP closer Blessing In Disguise. And then, after SMM slips quietly into the void, even the reflective silence of the dead air seems to be part of Tank’s master plan.
BY WAYNE MARSHALL
Best Track: You Never Know (feat. Hayden Calnin)
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: JAMES BLAKE, BOARDS OF CANADA, JON HOPKINS
In A Word: Chilled
