Free Love – Luxury Hits EP
In a similar vein to Free Love’s single If You Want Me Now these songs are a more highly attuned form of pop music that is aware of itself and its surroundings.
Glasgow-based electronic duo Free Love (fka Happy Meals) recently took part in Lost Map Records' Visitations residency where they wrote and recorded music on the Isle of Eigg. The island has clearly left an impression, as on Luxury Hits the atmospheric sounds of waves crashing, the passing of time, the solitude and the silence of the surroundings they experienced are all captured in the brief gaps between notes.
With the new name comes a new and more ambitious sound which leaves the listener feeling as though they've escaped into a Nintendo dreamworld. In the opening track, Et Avant, Suzanne Rodden's vocals are otherworldly and fragmented as though they're being experimented with and pieced together as we listen, mirroring creation and sounding like an electronic devotional laying the foundations for the rest of the EP.
With tracks such as Tomorrow Could Be Heaven and How Do You Feel comes greater clarity. In a similar vein to their 2016 single If You Want Me Now, released under their previous name, these songs are classic dance tracks, a more highly attuned form of pop music that is aware of itself and its surroundings.
The drums march on in a machine-like manner but there is an inherent, meditative sense of calm in the repetition and in the movement of the rest of the EP, which mimics the natural biomechanics of the body and the world around us. The drums are like the heartbeat, the silences between the notes, the breaths and natural pauses, and the lyrics are like mantras which leave the listener's mind and body feeling wholly uplifted.
Listen to: Tomorrow Could Be Heaven, Synchronicity, Playing As Punks