Download Letter to a Loved One by Lorn
The LA future bap sound has some major crossovers with the net.label scene, for the most part, it seems like the producers involved took major notes from both merck and monotonik. The tracks that fall into this category tend to come across as thicker hip hop instrumentals, with a major synth focus. It seems that something flipped in the past few years, with this style of music reemerging as a commercial sound, rather than a netlabel sound, but the netlabels are catching back up again.
This album fits in really well with the future-bap sound, it keeps the tempos low without being boring, and jumps between musique concréte style sampling and heavy bass tones. This particular track subscribes to a few standard breakbeat tropes, the sliding bass and the automated shuffle beat create a throbbing bed for the demoscene style computer poetry.
The album overall takes a really interesting approach, with several reprises, and skits bringing you through the twenty minutes faster than you could imagine. This sort of mixtape approach is common with artists like madlib, but it is interesting to hear it in the netlabel scene. I was actually really dissapointed that lorn’s recent commercial release (Nothing Else) did not take this approach. Rather than extending his songs unnecessarily, each one gets to the point quickly and then ends without too much ado. It makes the ep length feel really good.
