Digital/instrumental artist James Freeman could be pretty new to releasing, however he’s already put out a powerful variety of releases since he creatied the “flexicble musical entity” that’s Gem FM. Since 2021, he’s launched 4 full albums and a smattering of singles below the moniker. With a foundation in blues guitar and a Ratatat-like composition model of merging analog and digital sounds, his new Sonic Growth album exhibits him stepping up the electonic side of his model, with some fascinating outcomes.
Whereas producing the brand new album, my studio monitoring scenario obtained a big technical improve. This helped tremendously in fine-tuning my engineering and mastering efforts. I believe Sonic Growth represents my finest work so far with regard to my mixing and engineering. Having stated that, I acknowledge that there’ll all the time be room for enchancment.
This updgare not solely exhibits within the imrpoved digital prpduction high quality of the work on Sonic Growth however within the creativity of songwriting and incorporating extra dance parts than Gem FM’s earlier works. This album goes far past a beat paired with a guitar, and Freeman says what was initially meant to be an EP became a full idea album, impressed by classic 808 model and EDM.
With observe names like “SwagR,” “4banger” and “Slide on Down,” Freeman’s definitely received the EDM lingo down. Listeners anticipating some type of punishing dubstep beat must develop their concepts of a “banger” fairly rapidly, as we’re nonetheless very a lot in fusion territory. The digital composition on a lot of the tracks, whereas a lot mroe prevalent than in earlier iterations of Gem FM’s sound, continues to be there largely to characteristic the instrumentals.
On “4banger,” for instance, an 80s model synthpop beat and new wave haromines serve to be the gounding power for a floating panflute line which flitters concerning the employees, additionally accentuated by digital manipulation. “Serrated,” in the meantime, has a type of tropical beat with a digital synth of a sitar, performed like a classical Beethoven piano and album nearer “Slide on Down” has a type of Zappa-like chaos which captures an amazing sense of musical play. Discuss fusion.
Sonic Growth is the primary album whicn doesn’t characteristic Freeman’s signature blues guitar in any significant means, and this exhibits the artist pushing out of his consolation zone. With this album, it’s clear Freemand as Gem FM is able to experiment much more with sounds, and contemplating how numerous his work already is, “versatile music entity” is certainly the fitting descriptor for this mission.
Sonic Growth is out not and might be streamed together with the remainder of Gem FM’s discography on Spotify and Soundcloud.
