- Melbourne producer Luciablomkamp’s debut full-length is Post Nature. The potentially pretentious moniker is -superficially- at odds with the meditative, aquarian spiel that hypnotically spools off the end of the sparse, techy snaps and warm but sad, cloudy ambience, of opener Catskills Mountain Resort: “We are all joined in a creative network of infinite energy, with infinite potential.” That hippy-dippy stuff is all about embracing nature, right? I suppose that’s what Blomkamp is oh-so-moodily investigating, the potential to “Release yourself from the reality you have created.”

It might sound like I’m dissing it a little, but Blomkamp makes it a pretty compelling sounding case. The record’s first single, Help Me Out, pulses mind-alteringly along these lines: with an artificial and quiet layer of fuzz on his deadpan vocal he talks about endless waiting, being trapped and afraid to move beyond boundaries into something else, something more that life might offer. Synth arpeggios, speeding handclaps and the bass build to ever greater levels of tension. I don’t know how many people recall US producer Eskmo’s 2010 cut, Cloudlight, but -in a good way- the two have a lot in common and they're both very effective pieces of bass-powered downbeat. When Help Me Out releases its tension into a lyrical alto-sax solo, you can hardly accuse it of being too derivative either.

Jol offers a thoughtful piano melody with a guest-rap from Hedsbent delivering a conscious call-to-arms. It rolls into Rosebud Leach’s sorrowful, jazzy torch song on In Time, again, bemoaning wasted potential. The track has a kind of a split personality, suddenly firing up into an energetically syncopated beat, under another fairly inspired sax solo. Even being thoroughly depressed can get you in gear sometimes I guess.

I think it’s Joshua Maxwell De Hoog, offering a fluting, white-boy soul vocal over a pleasingly big, wonky beat on Fear, but he could be the traumatised rap in the background I'm not really sure. The song takes the opportunity to actually fold the sounds of Help Me Out in, before building to a big, steady and wailing finish.

It’s nice to hear some straight-up production work on the back half of the record. The menacing metallic shriek / air-raid siren melody over a loping, ‘90’s hip hop beat on Shook, is a cool experiment made sweeter when it works in an acoustic guitar, like something Tycho might do. Now I Hear A Noise lapses into an ocean of pleasant ambience and closer, Saudade, returns to the piano with a haunting line, the same skritchy beat from the album opener and a sonorous fiddle, before Blomkamp throws down with the synth one last time, roaring like a jet engine.

It’s not too difficult to harbour the suspicion that modern life might be boxing us all in: at the very least, jamming us into cramped bars, nodding our heads in sad agreement with the mournful music over the slow downbeats. I don’t know if I’ll be retiring to the Catskills Mountain Resort to rewire my head any time soon, but, I will stretch to listening to Lucianblomkamp’s Post Nature a few times on repeat, just to confirm my worldview.

- Chris Cobcroft.