"Personal" takes on new meaning when it comes to the music Ben Kelly creates as Aboutface. Focusing on a primary use of sampling via field-recordings, the East London-based producer asserts his compositions with individual identity by correlating his samples to fit in with the particular narrative of each song as a whole. Nothing is accidental, everything has purpose. And he arranges his concepts in such a way that seamlessly patch elemental complexities.
The Hazy Path to Misunderstanding is his debut on Dark Matters, and it consists two intricate originals with an additional remix of the title track by Tin Man. The entire EP sounds off an intuitive thought-process that begins with the streaming grace of "The Hazy Path to Misunderstanding". Samples of chimes, crash cymbals, running water, and analog patterning build an incredible aura of peace that gets a tender neo-acid sprinkling once Tin Man gets behind it. The mood in "The Benevolent Shackle" seeps to a darker space of concentration and Aboutface's atmospherics unfold to dusky lengths without ever feeling sinister.
A well-rounded record that doesn't require a whole lot to convince its audience, Aboutface has concocted the right formula to keep music on heavy replay. We're looking forward to the LP in the pipeline for a tentative 2015 release.
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