Nowfeel is the artistic alias of Ben Rissin, a Canadian producer and songwriter whose watermark is a distinctly fluid brand of electronic music. Fusing contemporary, innovative arrangements with driving sound design inspired by the UK's love affair with sine compression, Nowfeel captures the precision of modern engineering principles alongside impeccable phrasing and pace. It's both a difficult balance to achieve and a difficult position to maintain, and it invariably sets Rissin's work apart from the veritable pack. Expounding on the motifs and breakthroughs of his Spectrum LP in 2019, Rissin has achieved terminal velocity once again through his latest release, the kin LP.

nowfeel · kin

kin wastes no time hitting its stride, with the opening track "reach through me" dancing wide spectrum percussion across earthy reese bass and spatial harmonies. It lays out an audio topography that will endure across the rest of the album, elucidating the positive relationship an album can have with a strong, relatively singular hand of tones, patches, and drum programming. In general contrast to his contemporaries, Rissin avoids the rat race of constant, invariable change in the timbre of an album or EP, and instead flexes that singular hand in the way a live band can channel visceral changes in energy without necessarily changing its core sound throughout an entire evening. Moving through the rest of the LP, the dynamic movement between tracks at half time and full time breathes an extra pulse of life into the release, with rhythms stretching from downtempo to midtempo, drum and bass, and variations on drumstep motifs. It's an ideal spread of the vibe, avoiding the trap of lingering too long in one discipline of songwriting or another, and it positively tees up kin for a place amongst some of the best albums and EPs to come to light so far in 2022.

The Nowfeel project has only been planting roots for a short few years, but the distance gone in both composition and design speak volumes about his otherwise frugal catalog. Rissin's ample control over the trajectory of his craftsmanship will undoubtedly continue to pay off with even more visceral musical moments, but in the meantime, there's plenty stuffed within the grooves of kin to keep even the most ferocious appetites satisfied.

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