Close friends in the Lisbon scene, Dan Ghenacia and Tolga Fidan team up under the AOW moniker on independent French label Circus Company to experiment with airy electronica vibes and West Coast trippy downtempo themes on “Hear The Light”.
Both Dan Ghenacia and Tolga Fidan as AOW have been strong leaders in their current city of Lisbon, Portugal, pursuing typical minimal house and techno concepts with both having previously long-standing relationships in the Paris and Berlin scenes respectively. Using the opportunity to break free of that with “Hear The Light” under this new collaborative project, AOW has them digging into their roots and influences of early electronica, ambient, and West Coast’s broken beat aesthetics. Exploring what has gone before as an indulgence to see, what I believe, is a quest to find the secret sauce behind the techniques of the era that defined such a definitive sound and a sound that knew no boundaries; something before the laptop minimalism tossed a world on its ear.
The most notable track “Boa” is an homage to their shared studio space known as Boa Lab which has a vibe that calls upon a bit of Global Communication and Tom Middleton, a smattering of Orbital, and a little dash of Sandoz and Richard H Kirk. “Boa” just has a real solid and comforting groove throughout. The other two tracks “Red Alert” and “Organico” run deep and hold a lot of weight, especially with repeated listens, making the entire “Hear the Light” EP a fully rounded statement.
Also within the exploration is a co-creative spirit inspired by Ghenacia’s psychedelic influences and alpha wave projections on the eyelids; a throwback to Brion Gysin and Wm S Burroughs’ dream machine experiments. Add in the concept of AOW using this project as a soundtrack to art installations, and you have a really forward-thinking musical entity. This seems to me like a more pure and earnest approach to making music than instantly reaching for the press kit, posing on Instagram, or making bangers to get on the road.
In a sense, the entire “Hear The Light” EP is a kind of intimate look at a pair of musicians and artists doing what they love and how they choose to express themselves even when nobody’s looking. With both artists having found success individually, it’s good to hear a side to each of them at play surrounded by the joy of music that is easily passed along to the listener.
-Sean Ocean
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