We just need the tech…
Released on Internet & Weed Recordings on 18 August 2017
Words by Jason Guest
Technology has ruined the music industry. The fat cats no longer have control of music. Good. Fuck ‘em. It wasn’t for them anyway. Now, anybody with a PC need no longer be solely reliant on PR to publicise their material. Potentially, they’re just a couple of clicks away from their audience. And they don’t need a studio either. Because, again potentially, that same PC means they have the equivalent of a hi-tech recording studio at their fingertips. And so here we have the first release from Third Culture Kings, a new project recorded almost entirely direct to iPhone by dälek founder Alap “Oktopus” Momin and Jan Johansen (Glorybox).
With Momin creating the beats, bass and majority of synth lines on his device, Johansen recorded backing vocals, second guitar, vibraphone, piano, horns, rhodes, and melodica as voice memos on his that were eventually dropped on top of the finished tracks. Featuring modern interpretations of classic vibes, the album brings together guitars and drums with sounds as diverse as Indian drone, early 80s synth pads, and ambient psychedelic sounds to form a dreamy, alien, subterranean and cosmic soundscape that is at once hypnotic and uplifting. Slow bubbling beats are complemented by gently propellant melodies in an eclectic yet cohesive mix that shouldn’t work but does. Naturally. And magnificently. While the fat cats look for a job elsewhere, we’ll be listening to this. We don’t need them. We just need the tech. And 3CK’s Is That Light You Carry? is the evidence. Spread the word.
Track list:
- Sunshine For Sadie
- From The Womb To The Tomb
- Sharp As Glass
- Ghost Lust
- Won’t Let It Happen
- Done And Gone
- Seven Slayers
- Flamingo
- Higher Than The Sun
- Is That Light You Carry?
- Time Is Golden Righteous
