Loud Neighbor - Escape Control (2014)

Loud Neighbor is the collaborative guise of Christina Steel aka STEEL5000, notably known for her Loving The Alien series, and sound engineer Martín García Blaya. The pair met on the dance floor of Madrid’s infamous Coppelia 101 club while Christina was in the country studying abroad for her third year at The School Of Art Institute Chicago, Martín had already been in the country for three years advancing his engineering career within the film industry. Now following a string of musical endeavors together, bouncing around different hemispheres and continents, the duo have their feet firmly on the ground with their Loud Neighbor project, delivering infectious, intricate and elegant sounds which flirt in the fields of dub, house, electro and techno. Road testing the pieces in underground warehouse events in Buenos Aires (Martín’s home turf), as well as Spain, Portugal, New York, Berlin and the Caribbean.

‘Escape Control’ as a whole sees the duo experiment with their live set-up, built around an amalgamation of analogue synthesizers, drum machines and digital tools. Classics such as the Korg Polysix, Roland SH-101 and the Yamaha CS20-M are prevalent in the compositions, while newcomers such as Dave Smith’s Tetra, Mopho and the MFB-522, add contemporary grit to brilliantly contrast the old and the new. Title track ‘Escape Control’ kicks things off, showcasing in style the prominent theme of the album, this being throbbing techno bass tones, STEEL5000’s sassy vocal styling’s, melancholic harmonies and raw synth lines. ‘Spineless’ and ‘Constant’ employ a more ethereal atmospheric approach, delving into dreamy synths and hypnotizing vocals, while ‘George’ and ‘Sandfly’ showcase the more direct and insistent side of the duo’s productions with their glitchy electronic synth hooks, raw rhythms and ever evolving dynamic.

Further highlights come in the shape of ‘The Fellonship’ with its smooth, airy ambience and classical inspired strings compositions. While ‘Black Clouds’ and ‘Train Daddy’ showcase the quirkier, tripped out aspects of the duo with dub touches, acid-tinged synths, menacing background atmospherics and a general spellbinding aesthetic. In conclusion Loud Neighbor deliver a stunning body of work here with ‘Escape Control’, they tell us ‘‘Each individual track has it's own back story, but they all have the same root. We draw inspiration from every day life and translate it through our gear into music; people and relationships in today’s modern world influenced ‘Escape Control’. Playing with the names of the computer keys, the title refers to the place technology has in our lives today and the side effects of such an intimate relationship. We live controlled by our digital devices, our status, our emotions, our jobs, and society not to mention the government. With our album we invite you to put down your phone, log off, forget about everything, and be in the present, close your eyes, listen, dance and escape control.’’