Trouble in London is something of a creative audio masterpiece. Having listened to hundreds of producers over the past couple of years, this is precisely the kind of composition that pushes the limits in a pure and naturally emotive way. You can feel the details of the story-line as it emerges – when the volume is up and the soundscape rains down around you, every element has been skillfully incorporated so as to make the experience as immersive and entrancing as possible. It’s incredible to have the whole thing move out and around you.
At close to eight minutes long, this isn’t merely a single with a few signature traits – this is a cinematic journey through thoughts and events. Guide For Good Lives holds no qualms with utilizing space, pauses, breaths, and letting the ambiance take its time to create the moment before you. Whenever you try to get complacent or have it simply be background music, the result tends to be that the music reaches out and recaptures your attention with its poignancy and unpredictability – not unlike a powerful piece of cinema or a book you can’t put down. This includes snippets of actual life – horses, human voices; all subtle but all crucial in building something so mesmerizing.
Where the first half offers an immense and easy to escape within journey by itself, the latter half completes the process in a totally unexpected and alternatively embracing manner. There’s lightness to the latter half, the piano guides you – before, the audio seemed to accompany your own ideas or feelings about the moment, which tended to be partly beautiful, hopeful, and partly industrial and edgy – the title concept lingers in your mind as fragments of loudness burst through, undoubtedly affecting the way you receive the experience.
The music winds up with something of a Massive Attack feel, just briefly, but the crisp finish and the warmth as you turn it up loud is wonderfully modern and gorgeously refreshing. The latter half offers the quiet, the aftermath perhaps – a mild sense of regrowth or overcoming appears in this rising progression, but again it’s left to the listener to decide how it really feels.
A stunning track, addictive in nature and easy to let play three or four times over as your mind wanders off with it.
Find & follow Guide For Good Lives on Twitter.
https://soundcloud.com/guide_for_good_lives/guide-for-good-lives-trouble-in-london
