Get set for four minutes of mindless electronic bliss.

 

The electronic genre is getting harder and harder to crack. With EDM becoming such a strong branch of the genre, electronic artists are torn between crafting a well-constructed piece of music and going substandard and letting a guest vocalist lead the charge into the charts. However, the few purists that remain in the genre have to make greater effort to show they prioritise the artistry rather than the acclaim, namely by producing stand-out pieces of music.

Emerson Long has emerged ready to take this challenge, with latest track — and the closing song on new EP This Is After — Regret Regret providing a well-crafted piece of music built entirely with instrumentation and atmospheric vocal loops. The lack of defined vocal doesn’t hinder the track, instead allowing the spacious synths to expand further and dissolve organically. This return to the roots of electronic music is not only welcome but also novel after the amount of pop-tainted tracks released in recent years.

Led by digital bleeps, the song isn’t designed to be the radio-ready pop stomp that many electronic artists gear towards. This is a track that goes from strength to strength in the space of four minutes, as a slowly transforming gem that serves seemingly as the last bastion of hope for pure, unpopped electronic music.  If we are to think of the introductory beeps as the final pulses of electronic’s lifeforce, the rest of the song is a strong and transformative swansong. While elements of pop certainly exist within the song — such as the steady beats grounding the expansive vocal samples into a tighter sound — it is by no means the main attraction or focus. Emerson Long has more to show than that.