Philadelphia producer Eev Frances has covered a lot of ground in four years. A given Frances track might be built out of rave stabs, Memphis-style beats, or Merzbow-grade noise blasts, any one of them looped and compressed into a blunt-force instrument; her more elaborate productions have taken the form of brooding post-dubstep, yearning shoegaze gabber, and misty-eyed jungle. No matter the style, the common denominator has been an omnipresent patina of damage: blown out, bitcrushed, and bristling with distortion, as though her DAW were buckling beneath the surfeit of ideas.
Frances’ new release, Sometimes I Forget to Breathe, marks a shift. The outlines of her music are more vivid—the beats have sharper teeth; the melodies glint like the backs of dolphins. If her early work often seemed like a kind of primordial soup, the new record fast-forwards a considerable distance through her music’s evolution. So long, protozoa: Here we see the creature fully formed, striding confidently into the wilderness.
It’s not just that the music sounds more polished; everything about it is more intricate, more carefully thought out. One influence looms large: the hyperkinetic blasts of late-’90s and early-’00s IDM. The opening “Pistol Whip (Demo)” is a riot of barely restrained energy. A furious drum’n’bass rhythm assembles itself out of clattering cutlery; calming pads keep the mood placid while the bassline tangles itself into increasingly contorted shapes. There’s something almost cartoonish about the squelchy textures and crystalline tone colors, but the giddiness is tempered by a more downcast undercurrent. As the track builds, the melodies grow hydra-headed, branching into contrapuntal chaos. It’s an unabashed homage to golden-age Squarepusher, but it holds its own in its sheer depth of feeling.
A similar palette and stylistic sensibility carry across most of the record. “Burstintotears” spends its first three minutes tossed by a wistful chord progression that lurches like butterflies in the stomach; a tinny crash cymbal announces a climactic drop and the arrival of a rushing, reassuring kick drum. (The title is self-explanatory.) “Blistex” is an atmospheric sketch for burbling synths; “Bala Cynwyd” channels them into a spring-driven electro anthem festooned with lush pads, metallic delay, and another bassline so squelchy it practically leaves soggy footprints where it lands. Frances’ music, despite the blasted surfaces and often breakneck pace, has always had an unabashedly emotive bent, and here she puts her feelings front and center. Suffused in video-game bleeps and chords that refuse to neatly resolve, it’s nostalgic and hopeful all at once.
Sometimes I Forget to Breathe is the most synth-heavy record Frances has released so far; she says that most tracks began as generative MIDI basslines—that is, sequencer patterns with randomized variables—that she would let run for an hour before selecting the highlights and building out from those. That freeform sensibility is the source of an evident freedom—rather than looping in predictable ways, the music tends to soar from peak to peak. But sometimes the momentum gets away from her. Five of the album’s tracks are over seven minutes long, yet most of them would feel equally effective at half the length. And not everything hits the emotional highs that the best tracks do. “Play Pretend” attempts to cross the surging rhythms of “Pistol Whip (Demo)” with the plangent pads of “Burstintotears,” but it never quite clicks; it feels pulled in competing directions.
The Phoenecia-like blast of “Body Double” and the sullen dub techno of “Space Heater” are better, if nonetheless a little bit confused; you can tell that she’s feeling her way toward something. It might be an idea about texture, or shape, or the way certain sounds can apply a protective layer between feeling and expressing. Maybe she doesn’t know yet, either. But you can hear her trying to figure it out. Sometimes I Forget to Breathe feels like a leap into the unknown, and for someone so early in their career to be making a leap as great as this is exciting.
