Spireview: 'Night Cycles'
Night Cycles, the new EP from Bangor-based artist Spireview, creates electronic soundscapes that are somehow nostalgic and futuristic, human and otherworldly. Ross Machala’s releases as Spireview on local imprint Born Sleepy showed his love for a wide-range of electronic genres and his incredible talent in creating moody and atmospheric tunes that pulled from these multiple influences within dance music and IDM. On Night Cycles’s three tracks, Machala widens his scope of genres even further into hip-hop and pop, while still maintaining his gift for vibrant and highly emotive electronic production.
The first track, ‘U no’, embodies Machala’s fantastic blending of the natural with the electronic; a live guitar melody features throughout the track along with various rushing synth sounds, and Machala’s vocals on the track are heavily reverbed and autotuned, yet he still manages to sound incredibly personal as he sings about struggles with identity and feelings of aimlessness. The track is something like a dense blanket of ethereal sounds both live and electronic, Machala achieving a kind of electronic shoegaze-sound similar to the likes of George Clanton, tapping into feelings of nostalgia through the blend of familiar and futuristic.
‘Out of Mind’ sees Machala go full on cloud rap with an intoxicating instrumental and an incredibly catchy hook, along with a typically stellar verse from Belfast hip-hop heavyweight Leo Miyagee. The final track, ‘Complications’, with its thumping house beat is a danceier tune than its predecessors, but it’s every bit as atmospheric and emotional as the other two tracks. Machala blends elements of pop music, hip-hop and progressive house in a similar vein to experimental producer Vegyn, but within his own trademark dreamy sound.
Night Cycles proves Spireview as one of the most exciting projects in Irish electronic music – if you could even label the genre. With such a wide range of sounds and genres incorporated, it’s difficult to label this EP at all, so we should just say - it’s class, listen to it here