Electronic/instrumental artist James Freeman could be pretty new to releasing, however he’s already put out a formidable variety of releases since he creatied the “flexicble musical entity” that’s Gem FM. Since 2021, he’s launched 4 full albums and a smattering of singles beneath the moniker. With a foundation in blues guitar and a Ratatat-like composition type of merging analog and digital sounds, his new Sonic Boom album exhibits him stepping up the electonic facet of his type, with some fascinating outcomes.
While producing the brand new album, my studio monitoring state of affairs obtained a big technical improve. This helped tremendously in fine-tuning my engineering and mastering efforts. I feel Sonic Boom represents my finest work thus far with regard to my mixing and engineering. Having stated that, I acknowledge that there’ll all the time be room for enchancment.
This updgare not solely exhibits within the imrpoved digital prpduction high quality of the work on Sonic Boom however within the creativity of songwriting and incorporating extra dance parts than Gem FM’s earlier works. This album goes far past a beat paired with a guitar, and Freeman says what was initially meant to be an EP was a full idea album, impressed by classic 808 type and EDM.
With observe names like “SwagR,” “4banger” and “Slide on Down,” Freeman’s definitely obtained the EDM lingo down. Listeners anticipating some kind of punishing dubstep beat must increase their concepts of a “banger” fairly rapidly, as we’re nonetheless very a lot in fusion territory. The digital composition on a lot of the tracks, whereas a lot mroe prevalent than in earlier iterations of Gem FM’s sound, continues to be there largely to function the instrumentals.
On “4banger,” for instance, an 80s type synthpop beat and new wave haromines serve to be the gounding power for a floating panflute line which flitters in regards to the employees, additionally accentuated by digital manipulation. “Serrated,” in the meantime, has a kind of tropical beat with a digital synth of a sitar, performed like a classical Beethoven piano and album nearer “Slide on Down” has a kind of Zappa-like chaos which captures a terrific sense of musical play. Talk about fusion.
Sonic Boom is the primary album whicn doesn’t function Freeman’s signature blues guitar in any significant method, and this exhibits the artist pushing out of his consolation zone. With this album, it’s clear Freemand as Gem FM is able to experiment much more with sounds, and contemplating how numerous his work already is, “flexible music entity” is certainly the fitting descriptor for this mission.
Sonic Boom is out not and may be streamed together with the remainder of Gem FM’s discography on Spotify and Soundcloud.