Soda Plains - Reconcile

  • An outsider's take on experimental club music.
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  • Soda Plains, AKA Alexis S. Chan, hovers on the periphery of the global club scene orbiting crews like Bala Club, Staycore and Janus. He keeps to himself, self-releasing most of his material. When he has worked with other collectives, they've been from different corners of the musical map. There were EPs on Amnesia Scanner's Black Ocean label and London's Liminal Sounds, as well as a track on a Her Records compilation in 2016. A sense of being an outsider comes through in Chan's music, which toes the line between brutal combinations of UK funky, trap and dancehall, and more delicate takes on calypso, tropical house and IDM. Reconcile dials back the harder rhythms. They're still there on the funky, bass guitar-led "Acetate," but tracks like "Decay," "Drifter" and "Orion" have a more pensive sense of reflection. Chan's signature pan flute appears on "Treadstone" to break up his use of hard truncated gun shots, which are common to many post-grime internet producers (Kablam, Bonaventure, Kamixlo). "Fossil" is entirely its own thing, with lopsided strings waltzing over a melodic synth sweep, undercut by a metallic scrape that ambles with a slow and steady kick. It's atonal and creepy.
  • Tracklist
      01. Decay 02. Orion 03. Saffron 04. Treadstone 05. Drifter 06. Acetate 07. Fossil
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