"as you follow my eye"
From the album "Peace Material", the track F:L from West/Step, the solo project of Pittsburgh based musician / producer Nathan Whitman, feels like a step into a David Lynch fever dream or, maybe, Panos Cosmatos' head while he is eating a turkey and avo sandwich for lunch.
Whitman builds his sonic universes with thick synth sounds, drum machines, repetitious guitar loops and samples. The result here creates a dark evocative atmosphere but there is beauty too as shifting sounds ascend instead of pulsating like hammers. The vox which I assume is Whitman have an interesting pull too. It is all captivating on many levels in terms of feeling deconstructed (and stitched back up) but also in creating emotional distortions, anxiety like when you are walking down a dark hallway because you heard a sound in the middle of the night and the power is out.
[Inspired by artists such as AIR, The Album Leaf and Angelo Badalamenti. Whitman was always a bassist, having previously been a member of Kansas bands The Appleseed Cast (2009-2015) and Horror themed prog rockers Black Christmas (2004-2015).
After relocating to Pennsylvania and starting a family, West/Step came to life as a bedroom project in 2016 with Whitman recording bass loops over ugly drum machine-made rhythms and ultimately diving headfirst into production and engineering as the project took shape. 2018 saw the release of Beta Trembles, a 5 song EP of downtempo beats and swirling synths the perfect stepping stone to the more focused debut full-length THIS IS TERRIFYING which will be released independently August 2nd 2019.]
In the end West/Step's F:L is something to add to a playlist and smile gleefully when it comes on driving down P.C.H (in Calif) at midnight.
-Robb Donker Curtius
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The solo project of musician/producer Nathan Whitman, Pittsburgh’s West/Step makes a blend of psychedelic electronic music with dark minimal guitar loops and samples.
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