Take yourself to the centre of New York City living, as cmon3tta (pronounced see-moe-net-uh) delivers the follow-up EP for his manhattan project – a three-track collection beginning with perhaps his most immersive and deeply consuming listen yet.
If you’re new to the cmon3tta sound: welcome. A live musician blending creative freedom and skilful production across a growing repertoire of eclectic and always well-written electronic songs.
The mahattan single and EP were inspired specifically by a trip to the Big Apple, with live field recordings introducing each movement and featuring throughout them. Chambers St on the North 3 to Manhattan is the perfect encapsulation of this approach, and provides a beautiful introduction to the EP.
We sway amidst a soothing breeze, a gentle beat and the subtle implication of a fast-paced world hurtling by outside. We’re comforted by this pristinely arranged, multi-layered complexity of calm, and cmon3tta both impresses and embraces his listener, balancing ambient keys and atmospheric rhythms, with real-life recordings of screeching wheels, live shuffling crowds, rattling cars, and subway station announcements.
The single manhattan features in the middle of the EP, and lifts the mood distinctly for its eighties groove and brightness, for the sheer euphoria of the mix, and for the robotic vocals that occasionally feature throughout the cmon3tta sonic experience.
Then book-ending the EP with the opener, Billionaire Row is Ugly AF reflects on the horrendous aesthetic of the tall and skinny residential towers of NYC’s billionaire row, and subsequently dives into the greed of capitalism and excessive wealth hoarding in being responsible for the destruction of so many good things.
Here we get an interesting blend of two approaches, a notably heavy bass-and-beat electronic composition, with robotic vocals and outspoken observations lining a fairly mellow groove but with intense and euphoric peaks from both the concept and the set-up.
It’s an avant-garde kind of noir-punk take from cmon3tta, no doubt relatable to the many who see these gaping towards on the daily, or those who’ve visited NYC and thought the same thing. This alternative late-night after-party energy and the disguising vocal effects all help gift the realism and honesty of the writing something a little more edgy and immersive.
The track even features a completely left-of-centre shift for its latter half, letting the words guide us through a quiet ambience, and something more scornful and confrontational takes the wheel, before an easy drumline and soundscape recapture the moment and slowly but surely fade out.
Refreshingly organic as ever, manhattan features vocals, vocoder, programmed drums, bass guitar, percussion, electric guitar, synthesizer, keys and even a rain stick, across a rather epic EP that’s brief in theory but vast in its sonic experience and substance, for really taking listeners somewhere specific and enveloping.
Before the official release, stream the manhattan EP exclusively on the cmon3ttas website. Follow cmon3tta on Instagram.
