ARTIST: LEE GAMBLE
TITLE: A MILLION PIECES OF YOU
LABEL: HYPERDUB
CAT. NO: HDB136
FORMAT: ALBUM / LP / 12’’
GENRE: ELECTRONICA / DUB
RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
*IMPORT

fter leaving us in freefall with 2019’s ‘In A Paraventral Scale,’ Lee Gamble explores another Janus-faced brace of retro/futurist visions in ‘A Million Pieces Of You EP,’ bending the timelines of late ‘90s electronics, UK ‘nuum mutations and avant philosophies into a hyperreal, uchronic singularity riddled with surprising new angles to his style. More than any of his releases in recent memory, this one feels farthest from the ‘floor, still hingeing around a pronounced rhythmic impetus, but more reflective of imposed stasis and time spent isolated in their own thoughts.

The process of isolation appears to have marinated his sound into, dare we say, more “mature” flavours of jazz and ambient expression, articulating aspects that have long been integral to, fuck we have to say it, IDM, which has long been misunderstood as a kind of perpendicular extension of jazz’s lessons in intuitive looseness; it’s really not hard to draw lines from jazz-fusion thru electro-funk, and its parallels in experimental music, to Detroit and early UK rave, and logically the avant wave of ‘90s jungle that begat IDM, and ultimately Lee’s music.

Lee’s skill lies in parsing and knotting these myriad stands into his own music, here resulting in some of his most direct gear such as the soul-reaching R&B vapours of ‘Balloon Lossy,’ thru the rudely skewed electro of ’Newtown Got Folded,’ to light-headed AI sensation in ‘Obsession Model,’ with something like Autechre meets latter stage The Caretaker in ‘You Left A Space,’ and fully present technosoul torque of ‘Hyperpassive,’ while sweeping into overwrought, Plaid-esque melody on ‘Balloon Copy.’