Gimme A Break Collaborate With Finn Page For First Original EP
For Gimme A Break’s first original EP, they are working with Finn Page, an exciting producer crafting up delicate electronic beats and transcendent soundscapes. In the solace of his ad-hoc living room studio, Finn has used lockdown to produce this experimental collection of Hot Topics. In combination with James Sibley's stunning artwork and short film, littered with his abstract and playful signature themes, we are delighted to represent the creative talents coming out of South London.
When talking about the release Finn said "Hot Topics is a four track body of music, produced towards the end of 2020. The Gimme A Break guys approached me about releasing an EP with them in September and I got to work straight away. At the time, I had just released ‘Crumbs’, a 12 track compilation essentially made up of odds and ends from the first Covid lockdown, so I was in an ideal position to start something fresh"
When talking about the creative process James explains "I’d also just moved into a new flat where my room is tiny, so the music you hear was made in my ad-hoc living room studio, next to the tele. Ordinarily, my process for releasing involves gathering up bits and pieces that I’ve made over the previous few months and trying to construct some kind of chronology with them. Hot Topics, however, represents my first attempt at working towards a specific body of music, so I hope that comes across in the EP. "
What makes the EP even more enjoyable is the wonderful artwork, accompanied with a breathtaking video, courtesy of James' Crit. James explains "any form of posthumous distortion (reverb, timestretching, echo delay) visually conjures the alignment of the production studio into a single instrument, as originally in dub, etc. The coming unlive of musical equipment occurs as easily as a spell is cast, weaponizing impossibly complex machinery into a single circuit diagram on a desk in a bedroom somewhere".
Working backwards, the equation of bedroom to studio can be recast, their relationship extrapolated to reveal a solitary (living) environment navigating its own (a)temporality, dislocated from whatever lies beyond the closed door’s frame by a barricade of coats, bags, the rest. The room’s window projects a panorama of grey living blocs outside, visibly saturated by material goods and luxuriously textured objects in their own windows: fruit bowls, juicers, walk-in showers, fridge-freezers, flatscreens, faux plants, mottled carpets and Ikea furniture dragged in from the street. Penthouses above and flats below: at this saturation all spaces are nullified into palimpsests beyond the cinematic frame of the window’s sill.
In the fog, condensation tracks dribble down the window. Plugs are clicked into place; the speakers coming unlive here: a meandering whir piped into the space. A growing occupation of stifled potentiality, rallying against the bounding walls of the bedroom despite their rebarred parameters. Spectral echoes lurk (specrtate?) in forthcoming bars and phrases, becoming (re)acted out in reverberant shadowshows, punctuated by syncopated pierces, bubbling threats of breaks, and the entire archival arsenal of the electronic drum. The tomography of the ground below begins to elevate and decline rhythmically, the floorboards impossibly elasticated by vibration.
A gentle undulation maps the convergence of the gaps between these boards - now acting as dark ley-lines, meeting each time the volume speaks. Blizzard-white lattices unfolding within the synaptic recesses of the mind — as lights flare behind the eyelids — as the smell of scored carbon proliferates. Awash, afloat, waves flatten, churn, and repeat. Lulls of calm straits are dotted with sea birds as country birds as city birds, perching outside the bedroom window now. Sunlight bleeds, revealing dust particles as microscopic interventions in space - spherical (almost) isometries, crystaline structures blindingly reflective - as they make their way down from the blind’s slats to filter between the wooden floorboards. The room’s contents become infected by the same hexen curse: the racks of analogue equipment are left to grow old on a wooden desk. (Hay)wires serve their purposes, flaring the black boxes’ lights in time with the music. Here, count, to, four — and again.
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