Kevin Hockaday - The Sonic
Dance/Electronica, House, Downtempo
United States
Overall Impression: Highly imaginative and brimming with a multitude of interesting ideas and concepts, "The Sonic" is a confident and expansive electro track that skillfully combines elements from both past and present melodic house styles to create a fascinating listening experience. Kevin Hockaday whistles up a fantastically textured soundscape that envelopes the listener with its diverse range of sounds and melodic concepts, taking them on a hypnotic journey that is both inventive and undeniably mesmerizing.
Strongest Point(s): Texture plays an incredibly important role in this track and is one of its strongest attributes, the way the texture is built upon as the song progresses plays a vital role in both the track's building of tension and its thematic development. The way sounds are subtly layered on top of one another makes for a sonically interesting composition that helps keep the listener engrossed from start to finish, for example, opening with sparse instrumentation that includes synth pads, simple percussion, and short injections of vocals, a great level of subtle ambiance is achieved, gently easing the listener into the track before delicately feeding them more interesting sounds and concepts as the track proceeds, this is an excellent way to build texture and helps add to the overall strong atmosphere of the song exceptionally well. Around the halfway mark, the song takes an interesting turn, stripping back the instrumentation once again to introduce an interesting synth arpeggio idea that's intervallic quality makes for an interesting way to outline the harmony, it reminded me of Jean Michel Jarre's "Oxygene" years and is a great technique to utilize. Due to the track's strong textural themes, the overall flow of the song always feels organic, as if it's evolving over time, and as a result, it never feels disjointed, gliding as if it were from the very start to the very end. It would be a shame if a track of such ambition and clever writing was let down by a recording/mix that didn't do it justice, I'm happy to say that this is definitely not the case here, this is both a well-recorded and well-mixed production that captures the spirit of the music brilliantly, it's not easy balancing such a wide range of sounds that each have their own unique tonal and dynamic characteristics, yet it's done very well here, containing superb clarity and definition.
Target Audience Appeal: This will certainly appeal to fans of melodic house, it bears all the trademarks of the genre.
Artist target suggestions: Tinlicker, Joris VoornTiesto, Alya & Fila, Mees Salome, Avoure, Alexxi, Nu Aspect, Icarus, Recondite, Above & Beyond, Mark Reeve, Romain Garcia, Jean Michel Jarre, Juno Mamba, Massane, Le Youth, Matt Fax, Durante
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About the Reviewer:
Andre Avanessian is a freelance session musician, composer, and sound engineer based in the U.K. Having studied music production and composition at degree level, he has taken his passion for all things audio-related to a level that has allowed him to become both a competent musician and performer. Being a self-confessed "Guitar Nerd" Andre has been continually studying the guitar, as well as teaching it, helping students both learn the instrument, develop their songwriting, and how to become proficient in home recording.