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For an artist long notable for the strong melodic undercurrents that lie at the core of his productions, Somna’s ‘Pathways’ album represents something more ambitious than a simple progression. It is the sound of an artist very definitively redrawing his own creative map.
Across a triplet of EPs, released over the last twelve months, he’s stepped far beyond the harmonic sonics that brought him to prominence.In doing so, he began to explore the outer (and inner!) reaches of melodic bass and the fierier kinetics of hard dance, as well as the more progressive house and trance ethers. These stylistic outreaches aren’t detours, in so much as they’re branching-out ‘pathways’, albeit ones which will ultimately converge back to form a new, broader-spectrum artistic identity.
No longer walking the line, on May 22, with ‘Pathways’, Somna delivers his most expansive LP statement yet.
The first of those three creative avenues manifests with Somna’s contemporary spin on the melodic bass aesthetic. Early in the tracklist, the rapacious ‘Touch The Sky’ (alongside Alan Fullmer and RUNN) radiates effortlessly, while his achingly beautiful and melancholically suspended SABAI collaboration ‘I Miss You’ leans into a more cinematically slo-mo palette. Elsewhere, the glittering immediacy of ‘I Wish You Could See’, (created alongside Kaidro and sweetly sung by ellie d.) trades in shimmering atmospheres and lyrical vulnerability. All before the slow-burning release of ‘Turn Off The World’ (his Kepik and Casey Cook team-up) pays off big and pulls the album even further outside Somna’s traditional confines.
Somna says of these ‘Pathways’ that they’re: “a reflection of evolution, both personal and artistic”, with the album “capturing a period where I reconnected with music in its purest form. I rediscovered my passion for DJing across multiple genres and revived Rodi Style – the alias that started my journey into electronic music.
Each of the 3 EP’s released in the lead up to ‘Pathways’ (‘Path To Light’, ‘Path To Shadows’ and ‘Path To Echoes’) represented a different direction, a different influence, and a different version of who I am as an artist. Rather than staying confined to one sound, ‘Pathways’ is about exploration, embracing the freedom to move between styles, and letting creativity lead the way.”
The album’s second passage takes a more shadowy route, where it meets a wealth of his x Rodi Style material. A project that began as Ben’s first musical outlet, has now been intriguingly reincorporated to run in parallel, revealing again the more uncompromising side of his identity. The bellicose mechanics of ‘System Failure’ (alongside Ramsey Westwood), surges with industrial momentum, while the flame-throwing energy of ‘Wildfire’ unapologetically funnels primetime festival chaos into ‘Pathway’s blend. In contrast, the more nostalgic undercurrent of ‘Keepsake’ emerges beneath its hard dance exterior, before ‘Connected’ strips it right back into something more hypnotic, allowing its restless, relentless groove to deliver its heavy momentum.
The album’s final stylistic trail likely skims closest to Somna’s melodic DNA, albeit one that’s progressively stretched wider and deeper still. ‘Oxygen’ with H4lo and Jordan Grace keenly balances its atmosphere with propulsion, before ‘Somewhere Dreams Come True’ with Adara brilliantly drifts between piano-tinted progressive and trance electronica. ‘Destiny’ with Monika Santucci and the journeying melancholy of ‘Side Road’ with LTN reinforce ‘Pathway’s sense of emotional openness, while ‘Love Hurts’ featuring Linnea Schossow closes the circle with a bruised yet irresistible melodic intensity.What’s resulted from ‘Pathways’ is a body of work shaped by movement, risk, reinvention, and the rejection of confinement to one single corner. Come May 22, all routes converge within Somna’s ‘Pathways’.
Find it through all good streaming and sales platforms here [magikmuzik.lnk.to/pathwaysalbum].
For somnamusic.com
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