You can usually tell when a storm is coming–threatening purple haze creeps over the coast, the palms tilt their dreadlocked heads to sky and the ocean seems all the more eager to sweep you into its infinite arms. The very air holds a foreboding electricity, and you know to stay inside. Mother Nature gives us plenty of signs when she’s about to turn our mortal world on its head. But what about when the storm is inside of you? Suddenly it’s not so easy anymore.

Adrift in an ocean of doubt and self-deprecation, making light of the fact you may fall overboard with next unexpected blow to your fragile ship–fragile self. Struggling to find direction amid the chaos, despite the cacophony of voices who are convinced they know which astral path to take. But they know their way, not yours–not mine. In an endless sea and a relentless storm, how does one create light from the dark when darkness is all that one possesses? How does one filter the noise from what the psyche is desperately trying to express?

Such a strange sensation, to look in the mirror and not recognize the person there. What happened?  That weary, wild gleam in your eyes used to be reserved only for dawn reckonings–there’s a reason they don’t have mirrors in the clubs you like. Did the nights become years and forget about you–the real you? We become the things we do, but of course we never want to believe it in the unfavorable sense. I know you’re still there, fighting your own fires, and there you used to be a time when you let me take up arms with you. Sometimes I’m not sure if knowing that part of you was a blessing or a curse. It was you and I, united over our demons, drinking until they didn’t matter anymore and talking about our dreams until we actually had some conviction in them.

Our journeys into self-discovery are never linear; it is often only in the most abstract ways that a silver lining can be garnered from the various dark places that inevitably touch our lives. Landside, a new project by duo Hunter/Game and Icelandic band Kura, eloquently describes this organic voyage through ambient, wistful music whose heart lies in deep, techno grooves. Kura’s vocals lend the personality and emotion to the tracks “Silence Before the Storm” and “Still There,” while Hunter/Game provide atmospheric melodies. The whole EP has a contemplative and ethereal feel to it, building from the slightly melancholic original tracks to deeper, driving basslines in the remixes by Max Cooper and Benjamin Damage. Landside is a bold step outside of the box and into the space of experimental dance music, and dare I say–it worked.

Photo credit Vivek Raj Singh

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