Over the course of the last six years, Canopy has been both a stalwart profile in the Upscale Recordings roster and a unique production powerhouse that stands out against the backdrop electronic music. With rhythms ranging from garage, to neuro-hop, to dubstep, to everything in between, his compositional spread covers an envious amount of territory. Backing up his multitude of songwriting staples and directions explored, the sound design and engineering quality behind his music complete the full package, bereft of any forgotten elements in the production process. Two years after the release of his Dark Places EP, he's returned to the forefront with the exceptional Refraction LP, displaying his most matured and polished release to date.

Cracking open a Canopy release is akin to a flight of craft alcohol; you have a general idea of what's inside the glass, but you're in the dark on the flavors, the textures, and bodies of the contents until you actually take a sip. Popping the seal on Refraction produces an album defined primarily by choice note relationships and salient atmospheres, with particular focus on pourous and pocketed songwriting. “Caustic”, “Opalescence”, and “Strobe” feature the stereophonic basslines that define the Canopy style, rocking juiced-up synthesis across heavy downbeats and chest-pounding riffs. In the wake of those tracks, the rest of the album takes on a range of other styles no less indicative of Canopy's signature touch, but developing along softer compositional lines with ephemeral overtones. “Flare”, “Redshift”, and “Incandescent” all feature syncopated rhythms at heightened bpms, channeling dancefloor sentiments in tandem with lush melodies and mottled foley effects. They breathe a different life into Refraction’s bloodline, ensuring that the album reflects the total capacity of the Canopy vision in sound.

Given their tenure and release catalog, it should come as little surprise that yet another Upscale Recordings offering is packed to the gills with precision craftsmanship. Given that the producer in question is Canopy, it's even less suprising that the album is so compositionally diverse, imbueing crystal-clear engineering with a powerfully emotional undercurrent. With his historical release pace to date in mind, it's unclear when the next Canopy project will see the light of day, so if you find yourself enamored with what Refraction has to offer, be sure to take a dive into the rest of the Canopy catalog, featured in full through Upscale Recordings.

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