Sunday Morning Medicine: synthwave, dreampop & deep house to bliss out to

by: Alexandra Blair Sep 24, 2017

Sunday Morning Medicine is an eclectic playlist for the chill at heart. Curated weekly, chillers of divergent tastes Alexandra Blair and Michael Cooper bring you a selection of tracks to relax to. Our editorial feature highlights the cream of the crop, but you can follow the official playlist on Spotify.

At the top of the deck for me this week is a melancholic offering from Christian Löffler‘s incredible second studio offering Mare. In many ways, the Mohna featuring “Haul” represents the best of the album—at once gloomy and optimistic, sparkling with an organic effervescence, and layered with an endlessly repeatable texture.

The track sees Löffler build a nuanced soundscape out of tediously tweaked samples over a solid deep house framework in what has become his signature style. Impressively, many of the sounds used to create the album were field recordings from a retreat the producer made to a coastal cabin near the Baltic Sea where much of Mare was conceived.

Body of Light’s “Light Is Gone” is a standout from the group’s 2013 LP Volanta Di Amore. The restrained, almost unfeeling vocal betrays the core of the track which pulses with a melancholic romanticism. This atmospheric offering flexes in the space between our narrator’s yearning and his seemingly unshakable sense of inevitable disappointment.

Perhaps it’s telling that the track ends in an ascendant, almost hopeful synth progression. Then again, a full listen of the LP sends this gorgeous tangle right into the supremely sinister gothic-inspired sound waves of “Watch Your Back,” so maybe not.

The Blaze, cousins and producers Jonathan and Guillaume Alric, have gained a serious cult following for their genre-defying and often cinematic music. “Territory” is one of the duo’s finest works to date with a captivating narrative video and a song that fully embodies the term ‘slow burn.’ The track’s synths at times nod to French electro—particularly around the halfway mark—but the track’s overall ambiance subverts expectations with spare deep house melodies, subterranean interludes, and a syrupy-slow, pitched down vocal hook.

While their hypnotic videos feel integral to contextualizing their music, “Territory” is a beguiling effort that holds up through endless repeat plays.

Los Angeles based duo Ardency seem to turn everything they touch into a lush, synthy dreamscape and “I Saw The End” is one such gem from their latest EP Honeymoon. Crisp vocal phrasing slices through the track’s wavy atmosphere, a duality echoed in the visceral lyrics—like when our narrator’s companion lurches out of reach, before turning back for one final disclosure. Shimmering, ambient sounds cushion the titular, gut-wrenching end times which, in Ardency’s expert hands, is somehow equal parts gorgeous and devastating.