- An album of downtempo house and breakbeat that captures both the relaxation and sense of awe that comes with the idyllic California coast it's inspired by.
- Half Moon Bay is a town of around 12,000, located a 45-minute drive south from San Francisco. The Downtown area is dominated by a big red building that houses Half Moon Bay Feed and Fuel, while its largest employer is a seaside Ritz-Carlton built on rapidly eroding cliffs. The coast in these parts is often foggy and windswept, far from the luxe developments that start up closer to Monterey. The rugged landscape reminds you that you're standing on the edge of thousands of miles of land, facing just as many miles of water, and not just on a pleasant beach. Though Tomu DJ is tight-lipped about where exactly in California she’s from, her second album Half Moon Bay gets those notes right—it’s idyllic, melancholy and a little frightening.
Opener "New Body" embodies this balance. The bent electric-piano lead sounds a little like something you’d hear on the menu-screen of a cutesy iPhone game, but the billowing synth chords in the back break the illusion of a warm, protective cocoon, a cold wind blowing in from somewhere else. There aren’t many elements at play, and none of of the sounds are particularly unusual or esoteric, least of all the airtight faux-808s that align her music with the footwork community she’s fostered as a producer and show promoter. (Chicago producer DJ Manny, whose Signals In My Head from last year offered a similar injection of romance into the often harsh and desolate terrain of footwork, is credited as a co-producer.) But each sound is so emotionally charged that, together, they add up to something affecting.
Individual sounds might stand out more than individual tracks on a first listen. A bit-crushed kick drum throws "Optimistic" off-balance after a tentative opening minute of synths and 808 clicks. The snare that emerges in the second half of the gorgeous eight-minute centerpiece "Spring Of Life" comes with a remarkable tail of echo, like a meteorite falling to Earth and fizzling out in the ocean. A breakbeat is worked haphazardly into "Bumpville," but it’s the only sound that sticks out awkwardly in an album where every element sounds curated to create a chain reaction out of a few elements. It’s too dusty, organic, and complex a sound to fit into such a precise, geometric arrangement, and because breakbeats are everywhere right now, it’s not as surprising as when Tomu threads a snatch of spoken poetry into the end of "Sunsets."
Because of its preset-heavy arrangements and its short-and-squat structure, with only seven tracks spanning a little more than half an hour, Half Moon Bay might seem like a casual work at first glance. But, like the music of Boards Of Canada, who also conjure worlds of mystery with a few well-chosen elements, Half Moon Bay takes on a greater stature in the mind once it’s over. You can return to it and get a sense of the awe, fear, and majesty that comes from standing at the edge of a continent and beholding the roaring, impenetrable expanse of the sea that threatens to swallow it.
Tracklist01. New Body feat. DJ Manny & SUCIA!
02. Optimistic feat. kimdollars1
03. Lost Feeling
04. Spring of Life
05. Sunsets feat. blessingsnore
06. Half Moon
07. Bumpville feat. kimdollars1