For Dylan Khotin-Foote, house music has long been a vehicle for careful studies of ambient tone and texture. On his 2014 debut album, Hello World, the Canadian producer used hardware synths and drum machines to craft muted compositions that traded the bleary-eyed psychedelia of the Orb and the KLF for a playful impressionism with little interest in historical continuity. The album became a touchstone for a generation of lo-fi house producers who slathered their recordings with reverb and tape hiss. Unlike many of his peers, Khotin mostly abandoned the kick drum, honing his focus on vivid soundscapes with albums like New Tab and Beautiful You. Finds You Well, his first album under the alias in two years, pairs his skill as an ambient musician with a newfound interest in spacious downtempo production, expanding the scope of the project without compromising what made his earlier work so special.
Like his early experiments with house music, Khotin’s use of warped and pitch-shifted breakbeats serves mostly to complement his foundation in ambient composition. Tracks like “Ivory Tower” and “Heavyball” feature breezy melodies and coarse drums loops in equal parts, building intricate collages that feel intentional in new ways. With its dial-tone arpeggios and warbling tape-deck stutter, “WEM Lagoon Jump” invites comparisons to ’90s IDM icons Boards of Canada, finding a soothing equanimity in the rolling current of its effect-ridden snares. Beyond their immediate rhythmic similarities, the two acts share an affinity for wistful samples and field recordings; “Groove 32” explores the percussive potential of short vocal clips doused in radio static, while “Outside in the Light” turns distant voicemails from family members into something warm and dreamlike.
As much as the album benefits from a renewed interest in rhythm, many of its strongest moments skew toward the softer side of the producer’s palette, with slight arrangements that meditate on a single mood. On “Lucky Egg,” a steady loop of pitched toms and synth pads blooms into a poignant snapshot of a snowy landscape, as a single crystalline keyboard floats like lens flare across its surface. The shortest track on the album, as well as one of its sparsest, it sets the tone for a stretch of delicate compositions that wring heartbreak from the upright piano. “Your Favorite Building” calls to mind the rosy miniatures of Blithe Field and Ricky Eat Acid at their most affecting; like these contemporaries, Khotin seems content to set a few well-placed elements in motion, stepping back to watch their smoldering glow from a distance instead of fidgeting with any single detail up close.
In its final moments, the album recedes even further into heartfelt solitude. With little more than a few skeletal piano chords struck at distant intervals, “Shopping List” finds a sublime beauty in the near-silent space between tones, sculpting excess reverb into a wintery jetstream that might otherwise be categorized as background noise. Less about the sound itself than the strategic use of its absence, it’s a moment that might go unnoticed on another record, but one that feels like a transformative reset in Khotin’s hands. What might sound ordinary in isolation can feel transcendent with the right frame of reference, and as Finds You Well shows, sometimes it’s the smallest details that can reshape your entire perspective.
