Establishing a sonic personality without lyrical assistance or some unique personal backstory can be tricky, especially when you're in the middle of a room crowded with your peers. The space in question is the one with a "for fans of Flying Lotus" sign posted over the door, and there hasn't been a ton of vacancy in there lately. Those who've broken out have done so by tweaking the sonic imprint of decaying beats and melting analog chords until they come across as distinctly tactile things, humid and slippery, blown-out and elastic.
Reaching out to clutch the music on Shlohmo's Bad Vibes might cause it to crumble in your grasp-- and then cut the hell out of your fingers. The L.A. producer's sophomore full-length comes after a handful of singles, EPs, remixes, and compilation appearances, as well as last year's disorienting debut, Shlomoshun Deluxe. And in that short yet busy time, Shlohmo has dredged up something strange: an aesthetic that's jaggedly delicate, filled with melodic beauty but jostled by abrasive percussive hitches, undercut with sandpapery patches of ambient fuzz. It's a deft merging of gentle, wafting electronic tones and intricately beat-to-shit rhythmic atmosphere, the sounds of old technology trying to reconcile its former gloss with its fading functionality.
The cynical ears that still can't get past the nostalgic surface of chillwave might have their own bone to pick with the cassette-deck/VHS fidelity of Bad Vibes, which stands out pretty prominently in hissy tracks like "Same Time" and "Parties". But instead of celebrating corroded, neon-pastel magnetic-tape detritus for its own sake, the music on this album leans closer to an appreciation of the actual rhythmic counterpoints, quirks, and resonant qualities of white noise. Alongside the moments that seem to revel in the flutter and crackle of old equipment are stretches that draw similar vibes from the sound of literal rainfall ("Seriously") or birdcall-strewn field recordings ("Big Feelings")-- not to mention the texture you can get from good old-fashioned feedback, like the keyboard squall of "Trapped in a Burning House".
The beats themselves are striking enough, whether they're the distant trickling clicks of "Sink" or the sharp, crisp snap-thump grooves that push along cuts like "Places" or "Same Time". Yet even the moments where the beat feels secondary to the other instrumentation have a pulse to them, run through floaty guitars or humming synthesizers that converse with the ambient hiss in compelling ways. Still, neither the melody nor the ambience overwhelms the other. It's easy to hear the silky, billowy tones through the dying-battery distortion, but hard to picture what they'd sound like without it.
