2011′s “Club Constructions Volume 1″ on NS, and more recently his contribution to Clone’s Jack For Daze series saw L-Vis 1990 explore sweat-drenched, jackin analog techno and classic hard-house flipped with a uniquely UK perspective. While the aim of these releases was explicitly to create functional club ‘trax’ that felt sweltering in the dance, in contrast “Ballads” is L-Vis’ first true artist statement since “Neon Dreams” – a set of bizarre, show-stopping pieces designed to spiritually open up the club.
With every release the Night Slugs landscape becomes more vivid, rezzing further into existence with each track. 2011 saw “Classical Curves” and “Club Rez EP” inject a previously wireframe environment with dense new texture. The “Ballads” EP continued that process, transposing the listener to the flooded underwater realm of its title track “Ballad 4d”. Fans of the track’s YouTube rip have dubbed it the ‘submarine tune’ for its obscene, living bass, like some mechanical whale cry. It’s the sound of a ’00′s Sublow bass tone emerging from warm ’80s analog oscillators, letting you up for air before sucking you down once again as drum fragments and debris float by through the murk. The track moves with a vast, sighing implication of a groove until suddenly propelling into decisive 4×4 as L-Vis lets the the drums take control again.