Great Dane – Great Dane (Alpha Pup)

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Since he first appeared back in 2013 with his debut album ‘Alpha Dog’, Los Angeles-based electronic producer Great Dane has gone on to become one of that city’s more prolific beatmakers. Indeed, this latest download only self-titled album arrives a scant twelve months on the heels of its predecessor ‘Beta Cat’, and sees Great Dane pulling off a run of three albums in as many years. As with his previous work, this latest album sees him fusing heavy, crunked out beat programming with curiously dreamy and often soulful layers of synths and electronic effects. Indeed, it’s remarkable how light and airy a lot of the tracks collected here sounds, given the heaviness of the rhythms and bass swells that lurk beneath the more delicate textures. The emphasis is certainly on bounce, but it’s often dream-bounce more than anything else.

‘Grrrreat’ opens with a loose, swaggering wander down into hypnotically ringing percussion, humming sub-bass presence and harsh 808 toms and claps that carries an air of curiously benign menace even as eerie strings creep in towards the end. By contrast ‘Cosmotronique’ sees bright blippy synths injecting flashes of colour as they ripple against a backdrop of flexing hip hop rhythms, only for major key synth melodies to suddenly power the entire track into what’s the closest thing to an uplifting pop hook to be found here. Elsewhere, ‘Conception’ sees what sounds like the whir of sampled insects providing an atmospheric backdrop for eerie synth blips and shuffling hip hop beats, before delicate treated guitars and vocal harmonics peek out over the horizon like a sunrise, guiding the track off into more warm and serene waters. ‘Pixxelporn’ meanwhile offers up the harsher side of the equation, sending jukey snare rolls rattling against stabbing samples as minor key synths add a weary melancholic undertow to the swaggering beats and sub-bass bounce. An impressive third album from Great Dane that offers up some of his most dreamy and enveloping work to date.

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A dastardly man with too much music and too little time on his hands

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