(2022) Ingredient - Ingredient

Review:
Listening to the first half of Ingredient's self-titled debut feels like walking through a zen garden. Airy, washed out vocals chew the scenery as lo-fi drum machines snap and burble. The instrumentation — composed primarily of MIDI and a handful of keyboards and jumping between subdued shadows of house, minimal electro and soft R&B — is usually playful and patient. Focused on lulling the listener in a trance, Ingredient erodes all contradiction and worry for the duration of a song. The calming effect is by design — during the summer of 2020, musician Ian Daniel Kehoe found he was tumbling into a pit of intense anxiety, depression and general unrest. He lost sleep and felt he'd aged more in a few months than he had in years, but found it hard to pinpoint where this wave of dread was coming from. He called upon friend and fellow music maker Luka ​​Kuplowsky for aid, and the two began experimenting with drum pads and synthesizers. The idea was to create a distraction, something to potentially pull Kehoe out of the darkness — they quickly found themselves composing full songs. Though there are some stand out moments on Ingredient — the wandering saxophone solo on "Raindrop" for example — it's difficult to differentiate many of the tracks, with most dissipating from the mind 20 minutes after your first listen. The songs sound strikingly similar to one another, blending together and weaving amongst themselves by way of the same piano tones, synth lead or even drum shaker mix. Ingredient is definitely not a singles album — It's meant to be listened to from start to finish, in one sitting. "Photo" is the album's standout track, moving like a deep European house cut and begging for enthralled movement. And that guitar lead, though brief, is ridiculously catchy. Ingredient is mixed gorgeously, the production is sharp — recalling the warm/chilly dichotomy of Blood Orange or even Boards of Canada's more mellow work — and both musicians know the inner workings of melody. Still, many of the duo's gently thumping arrangements offer minimal staying power. But maybe that's the point; Kehoe and Kuplowsky never set out to make an album, but a calming distraction to pass the time. This album will probably be the only one we get from Ingredient, as both Kehoe and Kuplowsky have their own successful solo careers. Though it isn't lightning in a bottle, it's ripe for a cult following, a groovy beacon to those searching for some gentle light. — exclaim

Track List:
01 - Wolf
02 - Variation
03 - Raindrop
04 - Transmission
05 - Photo
06 - Illumination
07 - Resurface
08 - Come


Media Report:
Genre: ambient, indie-pop, synth-pop
Country: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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