- Gene on Earth's second album expands the singular producer's cosmos, adding touches of techno and drum & bass to his sun-soaked house.
- The ascent of Gene Arthur to the upper reaches of the dance music world is both unlikely and inevitable. Inevitable because the California-born, Berlin based producer has been turning heads since he started making music over a decade ago. His early releases garnered enough attention to bring him over to Europe, and John Digweed even included his first single on a mix CD. Those early releases, under his Yooj alias, were sleek, Hot Creations-style house—think overzealous filtering and wistful lyrics. But while they made some waves, they lacked personality. To be candid, they sounded like what you'd expect from a UC Santa Barbara student daydreaming about Ibiza from Isla Vista, and channeling his inner Luciano amongst the brostep bass wobbles. As Arthur explained for his RA Podcast: "The first eight years were spent trying to make whatever was in fashion with very little success."
As things shifted from inevitable to unlikely, he linked up with vinyl obsessives like The Ghost, KRN and Sugar Free. Arthur quickly developed a new sound, mining the best of '90s house and early 2000s tech house, rebranding as Gene On Earth for an instantly sold-out debut, Lazybones. Success became inevitable once again. The EP was an introduction not to just a funkier, funner side of his sound—closer to Hipp-E and Halo than Jamie Jones and Lee Foss—but a whole new Gene On Earth world. Now, Arthur plays two to three gigs every weekend, runs his label Limousine Dream and even launched amusic education website. On his second LP, Time On The Vine, he expands his horizons, bringing downtempo, techno and drum & bass in contact with his usual tech house nuggets (to steal one of his usual catchphrases).
On last year's The Sound Of Limo compilation, Arthur curated tracks from his adopted crew to paint a panorama of the best of contemporary tech house filled with swung drums, crunchy basslines and 8-bit melodies. The record was the perfect companion piece to Arthur's debut LP, 2019's Local Fuzz. That one, like The Sound of Limo, had a retrospective quality to it. Following his unstoppable run of 12-inches, a track like "Turbo Island" was the perfect distillation of the high-energy yet understated and classy house bombs he'd been building towards.
Time On The Vine is different. "It's the amalgamation of my love for both underground club tunes and stony headphone electronic music into a complete piece," Arthur told RA. Take the opener, "Snooze Operator." Here his signature skippy drums and springy bassline are run through a hollowed out and slowed down to 108 BPM—it's downtempo, but still sounds like a tech house track. The album's best moments are when the tracks are both clubby and stoned, like the album's centerpiece, the drum & bass masterpiece "Flux Deluxe." Arthur snuck out a drum 'n' bass track as a B2 before, but here he goes all in: croaking frog-like synths, a detuned lead line and a hummable bassline. It's the sort of thing made for both coastal cruising and late night revelry.
There's a new edge here, too. Halfway through the psychedelic groove of "The City Special," Arthur adds a kick and snare combo that sounds beamed in from a steely Midwest techno track. There's a similar snarl to the muted, minor key shuffle of "Time Optimist" or the claustrophobic arpeggio on "To Bleep Or Not To Bleep." Still, there's a goofy sense of humor here—clock the saxophone twirls and extended guitar solo on "Aston Martinez." While Arthur isn't exactly a superstar DJ, he's not that far off, and it's that lighthearted nature that makes him an endearing figure in the rarefied echelons he's approaching.
Log onto his Instagram on a Monday morning and you're likely to see a stream of him in a Hawaiian shirt and baseball hat doing some exceptionally goofy dancing behind the decks at some of the world's biggest festivals and best clubs. This lack of contrived showmanship speaks to both his dedication to the craft—the focus is always on the tunes—and his DIY ethos. Since he debuted Gene On Earth, his cigarette-smoking, top-hat-tipping avatar has conquered the underground on his own terms. Time On The Vine shows that, far from becoming complacent, he's only getting started.
Tracklist01. Snooze Operator
02. The City Special
03. Time Optimist
04. Pinseeker
05. Studio Dobra
06. To Bleep Or Not To Bleep
07. Chuggy Elements
08. Flux Deluxe
09. Aston Martinez