Slow Magic - Float

Slow Magic
Float
2017
Spotify

I have been really nervous about this record. A couple of years ago I saw Slow Magic live and He absolutely destroyed. He opened for Girrafage and really stole the show, I was totally sold. The first couple of singles off of Float were, well not great, but I still hoped with all hope that the album would turn out well. So I rallied the troops and brought them out to the next Slow Magic show in Los Angeles a few weeks ago and again, it was not great. Well my nerves were correct because this new record is just totally lifeless. Where the Pacific Northwest performer's last record was slick, big and filled with great sentiment He is just going through the motions on Float. The album lacks any inspiration, any vibe and just seems like an Odesza wanna be. "Skeleton Pink" even features the drum line snare that Odesza often use on their tracks, but here it feels so forced. At the live show Slow Magic usually has a computer, drum machine and one drum; a couple years He made them all scream and soar but now his arrangements are complex for no reason. You keep reaching for something to latch on to but the world he creates is so formless and round that it feels like you are sliding against it. In interviews Slow Magic has cited a trip to Iceland as the inspiration for this record, which if you are Icelandic is actually a diss. I sure would not want my country being the inspiration for this vacant thing.

Throughout the album there are little moments of brightness, cool dance breaks big bombastic sounds but they are so brief if you blink you are bound to miss them. One of my least favorite tracks is "Drum" which is some blend between dub-step, glitch and straight up drumming. I actually think this was one of his openers at the recent show I went to and it bombed there as well. He tries to make to much out of the fact that He is using one drum, it doesn't add to the sound or make it unique in fact it takes those things away. It's just a regular drum pounding away into infinity. The middle section of this record is so incredibly boring it honestly is hard to get through. You do not get the sense that He threw this record together it just seems like his ideas aren't really there. "Diamond Ring" is a pretty piano and strings interlude, which is perfectly nice but wholly out of place here. It feels like maybe the concept overtook the music and thus the crux of what an album is supposed to be was lost. Every song feels like it is constantly opening but never reaches any kind of climax just build build build into fucking nothing. I like Slow Magic's older stuff, so I'm just gonna pretend this record never happened and I think you should join me.

3.0 out of 10