Vienna based British electronic producer SOHN (Christopher Taylor) has done it. He’s cracked into mainstream. That is, this current malaise of easy listening beats based music clogging our ‘curated’ playlists.
Rennen is the equivalent of pouring warm maple syrup onto the bacon of your ear; yet as we all know, if you over-dowse the alluded-to Canadian delicacy, you’re left with way too much sweet stuff and not enough substance.
Opening song Hard Liquor is the exception to the inherent homogonised feel of this record. The basis of its beats, descending and warping dub/garage is reminiscent of much lauded UK underground artist The Bug. Vocally this song (and album) falls into the post-zeitgeist trope of contrasting gospel sample to dense beats. Case-in-point is the album’s single Conrad. if a DJ mixed this track into Safia’s Make Them Wheels Roll there would be zero change in the mood and atmosphere elicited by the music.
Potentially there’s a hint of cynicism in my assessment of this record that is probably due to the lack of evolution from Sohn’s 2014 debut album Tremors to Rennen. This admission made, it must be concluded that this album’s tones, beats and vocals are well and truly ‘on-point’ so it deserves a listen.
By Dan Watt
