Digital Sin – Luke Tangerine (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

I spend a lot of my time looking for references from the past to explain where a particular artist or track might have found its inspiration or impetuous. But occasionally, you come across someone who seems so fixed on where they are going, sonically speaking, that they don’t even have time to sieve through the music that has gone before. At least, that is how they make it seem to us mere mortals. Luke Tangerine is such an artist; his latest release, Digital Sin, is a sonic slice of the future.

Pulsing clubland beats and bubbling bass lines form a platform for the more melodic elements, which come in the form of glitchy yet warm electronica, while synths cut through each other, some delivering crystal clear keyboard cascades, others softer broader, washes or shimmering, wondrous weaves of sound.

It is music for the most hard-to-find and sophisticated clubland excursions, not the sort of music to be found in our mundane, day-to-day lives; this is exclusive and escapist, finessed and fabulous. It is music ahead of its time, or at least music designed for a club scene that might not exist yet, the soundtrack of the club of the future.

This is a case of the music having been created, and now the scene has to be built to accommodate it. Perhaps this is a case of music so far ahead of the zeitgeist, so ahead of the curve, a sonic leader, rather than a mere musical follower, of fad and fashion, that it could well be the catalyst, or at least one of them, that ushers in a whole new and more sophisticated club scene. Wouldn’t that be something to see?