wanderlust - post - mortem

Wanderlust

Post - Mortem
Thought Society; 2013

3.7 out of 5

By Jamie Funk

What can you do in 72 hours? If you said compose an EP of highly diverse and engaging electronic music that fuses with jazz you may have a lot in common with Wanderlust. Matt Ripley is the brainchild behind Wanderlust and on his EP entitled Post-Mortem that he started on 6/6/13 and then uploaded to Bandcamp by 6/19/13. What's more impressive is that it’s a pretty good piece of work.  Maybe this shouldn't be a surprise as Ripley has been running an underground music/event collective for the past three years named Thought Society and has done around 50  events and free gatherings.” He also plays live out in San Francisco bringing equipment out to various venues that support electronic music.

Ripley isn't the first musician to combine jazz and electronic as it was almost perfected by Squarepusher in 1998 when he released Music is Rotted One Note. While you don’t get any of the insane Squarepusher bass playing, on this album you get a nice healthy dose of some standup bass. The juxtaposition alone of the bass sound versus the electronics is fun to listen to.

The first thing you hear on the album is a number of ominous synth tones that sound like they are in an underground cathedral. As the song “pm-1” progresses it starts to have elements of free jazz in that almost random percussive elements start to manifest. The song eventually finds a rhythm to carry as the bassist choses his moments carefully as to when to play and when not to. Finally the sounds seep into each other and then the song becomes a mechanism of disparate parts and jazz influence. The second song “pm-2” sounds even more jazz-inspired and the bass is more prevalent in this track than the previous one. A lot of the same synth tones are used though out and feel like an extension on the first song. ”pm-3” is simply a quick noodle on the standup bass before the highlight of the album “pm-4” begins. This song has the fastest bpm yet and by the end seems to shed a lot of the jazz influence and is more like a straight up electronic track. “pm-5” is another solid track that contains a couple of vocal samples and heavy percussive elements which drive the track.

It is obvious that Ripley is talented and has a knack for programming. If this is what he could do in 72 hours I want to hear the album he makes that takes a bit longer.

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