Saturday, December 8, 2007

Tom Middleton

Chris at Slackline just turned me on to Tom Middleton, a 15+ year veteran in the downtempo scene. I always find it interesting how you can love music so much, and be into so many artists, but miss some of the veterans that have made this genre what it is. Oh well, so here's to Tom Middleton!

Tom recently release Lifetracks, his most recent (of only a few) full length albums. He's been all over the place though, composing tracks for commercials, TV, and for many compilation albums and singles.

After a few listens, I really like the second half of Lifetracks. It's very relaxed, quintessential lounge music. Its perfect for a lazy day or ambient party tracks - hence "Lifetracks." The first tracks on the album -- Prana, Beginning of the Middle, Shinkansen -- are more electronic driven, with deeper bass, bleeps and cosmic sounds that resontate from ear to ear, but are fun to listen to. Prana particularly has a very cool, dramatic undertone of moody strings. After these first few tracks, the tunes become slightly more organic, pushing forward pianos and string instruments, and even (what I think are) wind instruments. I particularly like Seredipity and Sea of Glass, two songs that (as the titles suggest) have fantastic flowing melodies that soothe and relax.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Tom is prolific and generally unheard of. The Sound of the Cosmos is a compilation from Tom that comes highly recommended. The third disc, Harmony, on this release is chopped full of downtempo classics like the Bronx Dogs, Cosmos. This track is so good I have to think it is the inspiration in the name. I have Lifetracks in my PC cue so should have a review up soon.

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