Tracing his origins making music all the way back to a guitar he owned when he was younger, the Derbyshire, UK-born artist Synkro now uses dramatic and subtle variations of electronic music to satiate the desires of his creativity. After becoming a fixture of the expansive UK bass scene, he signed with Apollo Records and began releasing remixes, singles, and albums filled with all sorts of virulent circuital movements. And although his influences tend to be more obscure, drawing from early electronic records and the musty corners of of a handful of genres, the emotional core of his work is universal and deftly laid out for anyone to experience.
Recently, he joined with label Deep Heads to add his distinctive sounds to an upcoming compilation of theirs entitled Cosmic Vibrations Vol. 3. Led by Zeb Samuels, the label pulls from jazz, ambient, UK bass, and other aberrations of electronic music, shaping a sound as expansive as it is incisive. Synkro’s genre-blurring aesthetic is a natural fit for Deep Heads’ own penchant for label deconstruction, and the compilation reinforces their shared adoration of countless musical histories.
Synkro’s contribution, “Floatation”, inhabits a gently undulating atmosphere filled with celestial ambience and slowly cycling sounds designed to invade the lower reaches of your consciousness. Good ambient music allows you to project your own emotions onto any number of wide melodic canvases, but great ambient music engages with you in a conversation that never feels one-way. And Synkro has developed a conversation across this track, a sort of call-and-response soundscape that acts as an internal echo of your own experiences and feelings. It’s not particularly erratic, but it’s not passive, either — opting for a serene equilibrium between overt rhythmic motion and the suggestion of complex internal mechanisms aiding the song’s subdued velocity.
“This track is heavily inspired by mid-’90s ambient techno records by the likes of B12, Detroit Escalator Company & the Likemind Records crew,” explains Synkro.
Listen to the track below.
Deep Heads’ new compilation, Cosmic Vibrations Vol. 3, is due out September 23. Pre-save “Floatation” here. Follow Synkro on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
