Fresh from the successes of his The Moving Target EP and The Psychedelic Beat Tape from last year, Long Distance Dan returns with his brand new The Rise Of Tomorrow LP. It features cover art from K.I.S.T.A. that screams ‘hip-hop’ and certainly the breakbeats on this all-instrumental affair carry some heavy weight but don’t be fooled – the melodic influences and ambience lean towards the psychedelia that typifies much of Dan’s previous work.
Fourteen tracks deep, The Rise of Tomorrow borrows from vintage psychedelia and not just from the sixties and seventies (as was the case on The Psychedelic Beat Tape) for the synth presence on tracks like Electric Creeper nod to the eighties too. Whichever past decade gets referenced though, the experience is immersive and cinematic and if some cuts on this have a less-than-two-minute brevity typical of a beat-tape, many are much longer, nine over the three minute mark, two over the four minute mark and one of these, the atmospheric Levitation, weighing in at over five minutes. The vibes range from the horror soundtrack experience of moody opener Ritual Darkness to the fuzzy ethereality of Casual Magic via the relatively cheery drum break blues reverb of Saw Dust Blues and the distorted big beat of Warm Metal. As often with Dan’s work, so good are the beats you find yourself wondering what they’d be like with an emcee atop them and who’d be the right person for the job.
(Out now on Cheeba Cheeba Records)