Gabriel Le Mar - Flashin' On (2017)

Gabriel Le Mar’s latest long-player finds him on the proverbial roll. He’s already established a comfortable benchmark here amongst his peers, but as he’s an ‘elder statesman’ amongst them, it’s reasonable to expect that he will lead where others follow. Flashin’ On doesn’t disappoint, but then, why should it? Le Mar’s been such a longtime presence on the various ‘scenes’ (ambient, downtempo, IDM-inflected groove music, etc.) that he’s practically sui generis; he was kicking out his own brand of space jam back when his colleagues were content with spinning faceless techno bollocks in their basements, and as he’s an artist who never looks back, this latest slice of sparklingly inventive beat music fairly ups the ante. Production-wise, Le Mar’s in a class of his own—Flashin’ On simply *sounds* amazing: synths duck and cover with rippling facility and beauty, rhythm patterns spill out moire-like variations with all the colors of a gumball machine losing its loot, and the subsequent atmospheres are nothing less than warm analog bubblebaths. Best of all, Le Mar knows how to make his machines *rock*: “We R1” has a great, lumbering gait and rubbery bass line that makes the air literally molten around it. We can always use more of Le Mar’s praxis groove thang.