Last month, I wrote about Adult Karate, the solo recording project of Radar Cult‘s KC Maloney. Sonically, Maloney’s solo project expands upon the sound that first captured the attention of the blogosphere with his primary gig — by being much more minimalist, while still drawing from several styles of electronic music, including house, acid house, techno and ambient electronica. “So Low,” the first single off Maloney’s forthcoming LXII EP was a collaboration with Toronto, ON-based vocalist Adaline that paired the up-and-coming Canadian singer/songwriter’s sultry and smoky vocals with a sleek and hyper-modern production consisting of gentle cascades of shimmering synths, stuttering drum programming, a Nile Rodgers funky guitar line, a wobbling bass line, swirling electronics and an anthemic hook in a breezily club-friendly and radio-friendly track.
LXII‘s latest single “Chased” is an intimate and eerily chilly track that pairs Maloney’s achingly plaintive vocals with an ambient, house music leaning production consisting of skittering drum programming, clattering snares fed through reverb, horror movie-like minor piano keys, tweeter and woofer rocking boom bap beats and subtle hints of other instrumentation to craft a song that’s full of lingering regret, self-flagellation and guilt; in some way, it feels like the sort of self-examination and recurrent doubt that seems to naturally come about after a particularly bitter and heartbreaking end of a relationship.
