LATE ASTER | LIGHT RAIL SESSION - REVIEW

THE REAL GONE SINGLES BAR - LATE ASTER

by Real Gone

September 2023

Welcome back to the Real Gone Singles Bar, the place where we explore the various individual mp3s that have landed in our inbox over the previous few weeks. This time around, we bring you a vast array of great tunes, ranging from indie, to especially noisy post punk, to electronica; there's some brilliant Americana, and even an unexpected collaboration. This collection of tunes really captures the variety we aim for within this regular feature so, as always, we hope there'll be something to entertain everyone. The quest to bring you great new and recent music is still ongoing - if you have anything you think would be a great fit for a Singles Bar feature sometime in the future, please get in touch!

Opening with a haunting riff that sounds like muted trumpets played back via a wall of keys, Late Aster's 'Safety Second' gets off to an immediately ominous start. It gives no real clue as to where the track will go. Once programmed beats and various analogue bleeps start to fill the arrangement, a very slight melody starts to work its magic, but it isn't really until detached vocals arrive that the piece starts to make sense. The way those voices weave in and out of the electronica gives the track more of a human feel, but at the same time, the mood never stops being mildly unsettling. This is a good thing. Moving through passages that sound like an Orb remix of a light indie track, it's the kind of thing that fans of alternative music will love, but it isn't really until it reaches its instrumental second half that the magic happens. At that point, this live session recording really latches onto a pleasing blend of downtempo electronica and light jazz, setting up a superb soundtrack for evening listening.