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LP
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BEWITH 107LP
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Steve Moore's Lovelock is back with Washington Park, a gorgeous suite of instrumental lounge music that can only be described as synth exotica. A real departure for Steve, this is a more mellow, soothing sound and can be regarded as Lovelock's response to these dystopian times. New York-based multi-instrumentalist/producer/film composer Steve Moore is probably best known for his synthesizer and bass guitar work as Zombi, together with Anthony Paterra. Yet his Lovelock alias has been quietly blowing minds and warming hearts for a decade plus now. His latest effort, Washington Park, was not initially meant to be a Lovelock album. But after posting little snippets of his work, Steve had an epiphany that this could be the new Lovelock. Washington Park creeped out in a very low-key, early lockdown fashion and there wasn't much of a reaction. Gentle opener "It Means Love" grooves along in the laconic style, conjuring carousel innocence and complimented by dreamy, spiritual sax and syrupy synth strings over a digi-soul beats. Title-track "Washington Park" glides smoothly in much the same vein, almost like a slightly more acidic, squelchier version of the preceding track with more insistent organ. Swoon. Closing out Side A, steady ambient gem "We'll See" is all gorgeous, soft pads with plaintive guitar and organ giving way to soaring digital strings over that metronomic drum machine soul. The eerily brilliant "Seduction" is a track which starts like a minimalist slice of Tommy Guerrero-esque guitar and drum machine soul but soon takes on a more menacing bent as Steve leans into his long-held predilection for horror by creating a slow-mo haunted house jam. The tempo (and temperature) rises with "Center Square", a Latin rhythm section and a sensual sax rubbing up against hot and heavy organ and string action. To round things off, the ominous creeping groove of "Rhythm 77" feels like exotica-in-excelsis. Steve used all his old Roland beat boxes (CR-78, Rhythm 77 and Rhythm 330, Rhythm Arranger) plus a Chamberlin Rhythmate for all the percussion. Basslines were usually performed with his Moog Source or Minitaur and for pads and brass he used his Sequential Prophet 600 and Roland Juno 60. Strings came via a variety of old stringers -- Korg Polysix, Elka Rhapsody, Crumar Orchestrator, and Solina String Ensemble -- and he also used his Fender Strat and Yamaha Custom saxophone. Mastering for vinyl overseen by Simon Francis. Cut by Cicely Blaston of Alchemy Mastering at AIR Studios. Pressed in the Netherlands by Record Industry.
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2LP
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BEWITH 106LP
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With the cosmic-disco-drenched Burning Feeling, Steve Moore's high-gloss Lovelock project conjured one of the most slept-on albums of last decade. Chunky, neon-lit synths and crashing, spacey guitars ride chugging Italo basslines and smooth-yet-shuddering drums to thrilling effect. Finally appearing on vinyl for the first time, ten years after its original release. This is the sound of "Big Room Smooth". Be With Records was well aware of Lovelock by way of the rather ace "Don't Turn Away (From My Love)" from the 2008 compilation Cosmic Balearic Beats on Eskimo Recordings. According to Steve "Lovelock is an outlet for me to explore my more pop-oriented ideas, whether it's disco, lounge, soft rock or whatever I try next. When I started the project in 2006, I was listening to a lot of Italo disco so it felt natural to explore those sounds." As well as the spacier end of disco, Steve was also listening to Laura Brannigan, Abba/Frida, S.O.S. Band, Alan Parsons and Jan Hammer at the time. Burning Feeling was written and recorded in Nyack, NY between 2006 and 2008. A couple of tracks made it onto some compilations and, after a few years of failed negotiations, the album eventually came out on CD in 2012 on Internasjonal, the label run by Prins Thomas and Kai Fraeger. The monumental, MDMA-rich title track opens the album and sets the mood. The fizzing, dramatic synth riff refrain intoxicates, before cavernous slo-mo house drums enter the party to devastating effect. It's followed by the hypnotic, prog-Balearic mood piece "The Fog". Dizzying synths never detract from the overall smoothness; this is vital, classy cosmic disco. Pink Floyd-on-pingers languid space-funk makes up "Don't Turn Away (From My Love)". The beautiful, faintly creepy synth-prog of "South Beach Sunrise" closes out the first LP with swathes of lush keys and horns. The synth nexus that is "New Age Of Christ" provides a melodic take on soundtrack Italo. "Maybe Tonight" bubbles up through, swirling into a spiraling blast of sun-kissed, feel-good Balearo-pop. Swarming synth melodies, warm vocals and earnest guitar solos make it one of the album's most immediate hits. The mysterious "Barbara" graces the enormous power-pop-meets-Italo jam "Love Reaction" before closer "Deco District" luxuriates in what Matt Anniss described as a "grandiose combination of poodle-perm campery and rush-inducing arpeggiated synthesizer lines." Steve worked with Be With's audio engineer Simon Francis to remaster Burning Feeling from the original mixes especially for this double vinyl release. Steve also commissioned new artwork from designer Kane Banner.
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CD
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INT 003CD
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With releases On Kompakt, Permanent Vacation, Eskimo and K7, Steve Moore aka Zombi aka Gianni Rossi aka Lovelock has long been known on the scene. As is his sound. Lovelock is massively-produced '80s-infected discoid power-pop, where excellent neon songwriting of a very high caliber meets the ultimate groove, hook and song structures. The needle drops, and a hyper-reality assembles itself suddenly before the mind's eye. Polygonal structures accented with clean neon lines; computerized sequences firing with precision and synchronicity under a polished surface. These are the futurist vistas conjured by the music of multi-instrumentalist Steve Moore. He is the rare, balanced electronic-pop composer whose work is at once visionary and hopelessly nostalgic for the music of his youth: late '70s AM gold and that ubiquitous, synthesizer-driven pulse appropriated by everyone from New Romantics to prime-time TV theme songs throughout the 1980s. Though his analog cascades can approach prog-rock levels of complexity normally explored by his groundbreaking duo Zombi over the past decade, Moore's affinity for smart pop melody and growing Italo-dancefloor sensibilities keep him out of any such stylistic ghetto. In fact, he has become a sought-after remix artist both under his own name and under the Lovelock moniker in recent years, placing a club-ready stamp on tracks by Sally Shapiro, Camille as well as recent singles by Washed Out and Brahms. Lovelock has also been tapped by artists far outside the dance-pop idiom: he's converted tunes by the Melvins, Genghis Tron, and Voivod into raucous, glam-rock stomps and driving, Miami Vice chase-scene soundtracks.
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12"
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INTLL 001EP
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As one-half of Zombi and with solo releases under his fake movie soundtrack composer alias Gianni Rossi or his real name, Steve Moore has an extensive record of toying around with his musical obsessions: glam and prog rock, early synth pop and their manifestations in TV themes and B-movie soundtracks. As Lovelock he plunges fearlessly into the glossy world of Italo disco and synth pop, and there couldn't be a niftier choice to remix the first 12" of his upcoming album than Morgan Geist.
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