Lackluster – Dew And Smog EP on Traum

Lackluster delivers a new Bass / Club, “Dew And Smog EP”, now available on Traum. Released on 2025-04-04. Download now.

Watch the Official Music Video on Bandcamp …

Behind the Bass / Club : Release Notes

While everyone else was busy pushing the envelope and perfecting their DSP, Esa aka Lackluster, having grown up with computer chip sounds and early synthesizer music, ended up making simplistic melodies that twinkled in the twilight, shimmered in the dusk and glistened in the dawn, moist, lush, frank and honest. Being born in Finland led to a detectable melancholia and a juxtaposition of chilly coldness reminiscent of the Finnish winters and a mixture of dampness, warmth and morning dew-like freshness bearing a striking similarity in feel to the forests during the seasons of spring, summer and autumn. Esa was marinated in a layer of inspiration and support from fellow Finnish composers, helped along by luminaries such as Brothomstates (Warp) and also, early on, with the IDM/Electronica couplings of Merck Records, Neo Ouija and the tracker / demoscenes. Becoming known on deFocus as Lackluster, his debut album Container still remains as the most popular and appreciated and, more to the point, referred-to, record of his. Taking a step towards the leftfield directly after Container, led to the pure ambient and experimental drones of Esa Ruoho – another project that was about as far away from Lackluster as possible. Esa has also collaborated with Heikki Lindgren of Vongoiva – fully ambient drone releases as HLER followed from 2017 onwards – including hours and hours of live performances in the Finnish libraries and experimental ambient music festivals. This live sampling & looping collaboration also led to the birth of the Plugged Into Nothing-concept, i.e., two unplugged cables being manipulated and sampled using various apps and effects, a step into the direction of noisier, more textural, performances. Now, in 2024, we find Esa oscillating between the melodies and beats Lackluster, the ambience and experimental noise of Esa Ruoho, the collaborative live-sampling and looping of HLER, and also newer offshoots like pure frequencies and programming performance & compositional scripts for Pure Data and Renoise. His Dew and Smog EP is a collection of four tracks, made in the varied areas of the grayness of French Place, Shoreditch/London (Goodbye Frenchplace), in the middle of the morning during a rainstorm near the mountains of Rila/Bulgaria (Dew), the buzzed out suburbia of Kontula, Helsinki/Finland (Clavia Sunday Smog) – and the various areas of Belogradchik&Pomorie&Plane back to Finland from Bulgaria (Dubkop). The software and techniques might vary (ask if interested), but the person between the table and the device remains the same. Lacklusters EP with us features: Dubkop, Clavia Sunday Smog, Goodbye Frenchplace and Dew. They were all recorded in different countries at that time and appear here for the first time as an EP. Kicking off with Dubkop, this steady and hypnotic groove based piece of music reminds us very much of our encounter with the early released electronic records from Finnland although very different as it develops. By close review it unfolds much more of an ambient approach with its unique broadness and cinematic quality. Clavia Sunday Smog presents itself with a fusion of abstract industrial sounds and jazz inflected string sounds capturing the euphoric yet melancholic duality that defined that special era of the 90ies. The lush jazzy chords placed within a cold urban landscape create a striking contrast – where the fluent meets the rigid and evolves in an exotic escapist experience . Goodbye Frenchplace takes a turn towards the subterranean, its pulsating drone recalling the murkier corners of early Cabaret Voltaire but when you think the monotone minimalism of that time is carrying on, in comes jazzy stabs and soulful chord progression injecting warmth into the machine providing the track with a human touch. And then there is Dew – not so much a song as a slow-motion levitation. It glides, lingers and stretching endlessly over imagined landscapes. It has that hypnotic steady motion, that hovering quality which finds a way of getting under your skin in a magic way.

Download Lackluster ‘Dew And Smog EP’ in MP3, FLAC, and AIFF Formats

Tracklist & Tempos

1. Lackluster – Dubkop Original Mix, Download MP3

   Techno (Raw / Deep / Hypnotic) | 111 BPM – Gb Minor | 09:44

2. Lackluster – Clavia Sunday Smog Original Mix, Download MP3

   Ambient / Experimental | 66 BPM – Eb Major | 03:10

3. Lackluster – Goodbye Frenchplace Original Mix, Download MP3

   Electronica | 96 BPM – Bb Minor | 04:40

4. Lackluster – Dew Original Mix, Download MP3

   Ambient / Experimental | 119 BPM – C Major | 04:30