Emotional Response starts 2017 with a mini-album of ambient-equatorial enlightenment by Australia’s mysterious Tropical Hi-Fi. The final record from an artist appearing on the label’s first SchleiBen series, this also points to the future. Based somewhere in the far flung Northern Territories, the music of Hi-Fi’s pre-incarnation Electric Egypt was first discovered via the note-worthy airwaves of L.A’s outstanding Dublab radio station. As the wonderfully diverse internet shows and project’s dense, hip-hop inspired collages came to fruition with 2012’s Exotica release, a dual awareness and sporadic contact was maintained whenever a signal could be established with Hi-Fi base camp. As the SchleiBen series was formed, the studio-DJ-cut-up-mix of Oceanic Mythology was warmly received as an inspired counterpoint to the dense offering from Don’t DJ. These first real solo recordings from the Hi-Fi crew – whoever he/she/they maybe – moves on from the cut’n’paste of Electric Egypt to seek a meditative vision. Ambient, drone and field recordings are all part of a drifting tropical flavour that encompasses the listener. Music truly inspired by it’s surroundings, this is not some music journal, flying in to sample a life and it’s sounds, but the real, living entity and it can be heard deep across the 8 short pieces. None is more typified than Tahiti Blue, where fellow traveler Mike Cooper layers his ubiquitous steel blues over simple, lilting drums. Mixed by Leaving Record’s Matthewdavid (with whom more to come on the label in 2017), photography by Native Finger and the ever-present encouragement of friend and neighbour, Ariel Kalma, this is conceptual album to lay back, drift off on undulating swells and simply, let go to.

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