Mariska Neerman – Fresh Eyes (Shawescape Rmx) [HC Records]

The Valencian label HC Records returns to the origins of the Detroit sound with a fresh and renewed interpretation by Belgian artist Mariska Neerman. With a magnificent harmonic conjugation, Finding Our Way Back Home is a musical tale that plunges us, from the shores of the North Sea, in an underwater journey through iridescent passages inviting us to discover the orography of the seabed, where fantastic abyssal creatures and infinite coral banks interweave a multicoloured horizon.

Crossing the English Channel in our futuristic and underwater ship we glimpse the first harmonies of Transatlantic Romancer, the first vinyl cut, where the Hi-Tech Jazz precepts developed in the Motor City by Mike Banks, Gerald Mitchell and the rest of the URcomponents, they are embodied in an emotional Neo Detroit arrangement where cavernous basses, liquefied pads and sparkling keyboards play like fish in foam in an elaborate and melodic “in crescendo” compendia, along with the sinuous cadence of a calm broken rhythm.

We enter a whirlwind of sound sensations in which melancholy, hope and the reunion with the essence of oneself are distilled in each note and atmosphere of Finding Our Way Back Home. A peak in maximum splendour and artistic intensity in which Mariska displays a colossal compendium of creative resources only available to a virtuous woman to whom the immensity of the oceanis too small. Pure fluorescentElectro as rare to find today as a black pearl.

We make a stop on our trip posing our bathyscaphe on an abandoned wreckage, from where we observe the ritual by which, mustering the strength, thousands of snorks get up every day and sing their oblong and diaphonic voices in Rise Up, the B side opening track. In it, three sound layers overlap like ocean currents: on the one hand, a marked 4×4 beat spiced up by a rich rhythmic structure between percussions and hi-hat lacking the mid-tempo hegemony of the snare; on the other, a dense and slow bass in the background; and, on the surface, an amalgam of brilliant arpeggios and melodies in an unprecedented and chromatic explosive symphony.

From a deep chasm, the bubbly and euphoric melodies of Fresh Eyes caress our soul and lighten our gaze in a new exercise of futuristic broken rhythms in which waving harmonic sequences dominate the development of its entire sonic skeleton. It shows the overwhelming ability of this creator to draw fairy landscapes with the use of electronic musical synthesis.

An ending as dramatic as it is hopeful is the one that Anima Sola expresses as the ending of the trip, where the mastery of an elaborate harmonic creation intoxicates our senses in just two and a half minutes of pure helical catharsis that propels us towards the surface.

As an epilogue, and as a bonus track in digital download, Detroit producer Shawescape remakes Fresh Eyes, giving the rhythmic part more presence and force and giving the genuine sound of Detroit to the melody treatment.

A neat mastering from Black Monolith Studios, directed by Steve Voidloss, polishes every sound frequency until they shine.

The graphic aspect has been treated with the utmost care. On the one hand, through the cover created by illustrator Manuel Monzonis aka LuzdeKilo, who manages to capture all the sound, conflict and spirituality of the EP in a performance in which hundreds of marine creatures accompany a female figure that ascend towards the light. And, on the other, the creative direction of Dani Requeni, who succeeds in the design of the back cover with a selection of elegant waving fonts, together with a clean and tidy spatial composition.

Estimated release date: April 19th, 2021.