JASON LANOX
Burning Every Bridge That I Cross To Find Some Beautiful Place To Get Lost
HENK001
Henk Recordings 2012
08 Tracks. 43mins36secs

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A tidy helping of urban noises, a short blast of orchestral synthesis, a moody ambient drone … It is quite hard to guess exactly where Jason Lanox is heading to from the first minute and a half of his debut album, but as soon as the sleek groove which fuels the second track kicks in, everything falls into place rather nicely. Deep, soulful and extremely smooth, Burning Every Bridge… is something of a grower, its lush cinematic techno and ambient hinting a much wider spaces than the confines of nightclubs.

So far, Lanox has released a couple of EPs on Dutch imprint Bangbang!, and is now finding himself with the daunting prospect of inaugurating the newly formed Henk Recordings. Born in the mid-eighties, the Amsterdam-based musician has been surrounded by music from an early age and became acquainted with dance music during his formative years, which eventually led him to make music of his own, perform live and DJ around his native Netherlands.

Although techno influences infuse part of Burning Every Bridge…, Lanox tampers this with lush soundscapes and more atmospheric or abstract moments. Whilst Destinator, Get Lost or The Seas Of Aesfa are rather fine examples of fairly minimalist techno, driven by sleek grooves and served by slow progressive loops and motifs, each developing over the course of several minutes, the rest of the album is much more laid-back and atmospheric. On Blinded By Numbers, Lanox strips the beat back to reveal a series of fluid soundscapes develop and spread through the whole piece. With Wired, he ventures into a much more abstract territory as he sources a sliced-up broken beat from his hip-hop influences, but, whilst he assembles tiny electronics and syncopated noises, he balances this by introducing a dubbey motif over it all at the half way mark, shaving off a bit of the edgy feel of the piece, which he manages to recovers in part later on as he builds on dreamy layers. This dreamy aspect is carried forward onto the ambient You Can’t Save Anyone From Themselves and Darkwaters, the former developing slowly around a loose melody and flickering electronics, the latter keeping to a more purely textural aspect, carried in part by field recordings and dense atmospherics.

For a first full length effort, Burning Every Bridge… proves very convincing indeed. Here, Lanox alternates between ambiences rather well, yet he manages to bring it all together to give the whole album a very definite and consistent feel. It may take a handful of listens to truly get a good grip of it all, but it certainly deserves the effort.

4.2/5

Henk Recordings
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