Premiere: Levon Vincent - Cake 1

Levon Vincent has had a busy year: the revered producer and DJ has issued six releases in 2018, and he’s rounding things off in December with a three-track 12″ for his own imprint, Novel Sound, arriving on 14th December.

The curiously-titled release veers between weighty, swung dub techno and joyful melodic exploration, allowing us a glimpse of this shape-shifting producer at his most playful. For a further glimpse, just check out the cover: we’d like a slice of that synthesizer cake, please.

Today, we’re more than excited to premiere “Cake 1“, the release’s opening track. One of Vincent’s more abstract works, this mid-tempo slow-burner has a woozy, psychedelic feel that recalls RAMZi or Jon Hassell, as elements appear and recede unexpectedly over the course of its eight-minute runtime.

“Cake 1” feels like a return to Levon Vincent’s roots, the dark and suspenseful shades of earlier tracks such as “Double Jointed Sex Freak“, a classic that shares samples with “Cake 1“, distorted sonic artefacts that sound as if they’re from a busted delay pedal. Conga lines drift through a fog of reverb, punctuated by plangent chords and one singular, revolving bass note that repeats like a mantra. In the absence of structure, Vincent finds a sublime sense of abandon. “Synthesizer cake!” is an exploration, and we love the place that it’s found.