Nashville-area indie-tronica producer-singer-songwriter Jonathan Bailey, a.k.a. Lava Gulls, released his third EP, Transience, on New Jersey’s Good Authority records earlier in 2021. Lava Gulls’ Transience stands as a six-track, ambient dance-techno release composed on the drum machine and busted piano of Bailey’s mind.
Transience gives a nod to the uptempo stylings of Four Tet and, more so, the vocal sentiments of Thom Yorke—when it comes to modern, popular ambient-techno—and the influence of experimental, avant-garde composer John Cage. Listeners will nod their heads in time while wondering “where’d this kid get his pipes?”
Lava Gulls’ plucking and bowing of the repurposed piano’s strings to create a drone and harp-like texture also serve as an apt metaphor for the deconstruction and re-contextualization of the artist’s spiritual experiences, according to Bailey. He also went to town on the drum machine with tight layering and mixing. The precision and accuracy of both allows multiple layers to sound like one, creating a fullness that must make Lava Gulls’ job in the studio more like directing a flock of migrating birds instead of merely several lost ones.
On “Work,” the EP’s outstanding pop-banger, Lava Gulls shines in all of Transience’s strong suits while depicting the feel of an ’80s movie soundtrack, dropping Lava Gulls’ fans (or “Gullettes”) into a mildly frantic, late-’80s downtown-shopping-girl movie sequence, as God intended. This track is where the understanding head-nodding turns into a “repeat song” swipe.
“While much of the record functions as a diary entry on religious disaffection, ‘Slack’ [the opening track] was inspired in particular by decay, from broken friendships to the existential threat of climate change,” said Bailey’s publicist, Colin Smith. “But, much like finding new meaning in his past and finding new sounds from a broken piano, maybe it’s all cyclical.”
“The music functions as a diary entry on religious baggage and relational decay,” according to further information included in promotional materials. “More broadly, it’s dance music”—dance music birthed in sweaty basements and darkened clubs, recorded, produced and mixed in between bedrooms in Nashville and Fernandina Beach, Florida.
Lava Gulls’ Transience can be found at lavagulls.bandcamp.com, along with previous Lava Gulls releases Artifacts and Glass Negative.
