4 out of 5

Label: Analogical Force

Produced by: Gregory de Rocher

I was recently chattering away some nonsense about how some music has tell-tale signs of being created by artists newer to the scene – not necessarily any comment on their skill, rather just some perceived level of comfort with wielding that skill.

Similarly, Lowfish’s perfectly-named Thaw EP arrives with such slowroll confidence, and without being flashy in the slightest, that I was not surprised to see the artist’s discography stretches back a couple+ decades (with – speaking to my still lacking knowledge in this genre – a well-known label under their auspice as well…).

The four tracks here very much remind me of Ed DMX’s ability to know exactly how much to tweak a song across its runtime to keep it fresh, while also having a keen sense of what elements you need to add to a basic beat to make it stand out anrew; whereas Ed is retro and funky, though, Lowfish – Gregory de Rocher – is all laid-back cool, with a warm, familiar, mid-00s bedroom vibe to the production. These are electro pop tunes, which is in no way a discredit to the skill it takes to know how to make this stuff so well, as, again, restraint seems to take infinitely more time to learn than how to twist the knobs.

But that is kind of it. Thaw is named well because it’s kind of in that state throughout, if slowly warming up from more chill to bop as it goes along. A result of being the relaxed eletro person instead of the club one, though, is that this is maybe a little less directly engaging, and alongside a pretty set BPM, you can walk away with a good sense of what the EP holds from a single track. Should you walk away, though? Heck no.