Dopplebangers by Space Jesus & Esseks
So I stumbled upon Gravitas by hearing Stardust Redux (Filibusta Remix) by Minnesota on Pandora a few weeks ago and then by listening again on Youtube was lead to the Gravitas website itself. All I can say is, gold mine. Aside from Pretty Lights, which is the mecca of all music in my book, this is the second best site i’ve found for consistently good electronic music. From my limited research, I know that “Gravitas Recordings is an electronic music label and creative collective based in Austin, TX.” I’ve always heard about Austin being a hub for music, now I guess I really believe it. Anyways, I went on a downloading binge on this site about a month ago and downloaded all of their content, which is a lot. I have listened to maybe a 1/4 of it and in that 25% found probably 8 songs that I absolutely love. I consider that a pretty good haul. Anyways, I had put new Gravitas albums on the back-burner for a while until their emails finally wore me down.. & I downloaded this album “Dopplebangers” by Space Jesus & Essek. Well, one listen and “Don’ Bite Me” immediately stood out. I can’t find the origin of the sample but it is as follows “It was quite surprising because we found that it was actually able to disappear. Imagine you are actually able to foreshadow why would you be invisible? If you are just below the sun what you're gonna see is a shadow. Imagine your shadow, imagine you're invisible. Why would you be invisible? Imagine your shadow. Disappear. Don’ bite me. I’m dangerous. I have spikes on my back.” I’m not an expert on the animal kingdom, but I have a feeling this is a lecture describing a lizard/reptilian of some sort who is both able to camouflage itself and display spikes on its back to protect against predators. I don’t necessarily see a deeper meaning to these lyrics, but I’m sure there is one. Maybe speaking to the evolution of a species? We look at the insane leaps a species is able to make to avoid predators, & wonder where will our own evolution take us? (RELATED) Last night I watched the 3rd episode of Black Mirror where the people all have integrated in their neck a device which allows them to record everything that they do. That merging of man & machine is where our society seems to be headed, it is the natural progression to want to optimize ourselves in every way possible, just like this species, which has 2 separate ways to conceal itself from enemies. The “Don’ Bite Me” could allude to our deepest instinct as human beings, survival. Deeper meaning or not, I fucking love this song. It has a really solid intro & right after the drop, at 1:37, there is a tiny little synch between the word “imagine” and the beat and its goddamn glorious. After that, it comes together really nicely. A lot of electronic music it seems to me relies too heavily on what I’ll classify as “weird beats” that are sort of off-putting and the opposite of satisfying. This song does an awesome job of integrating those off beats & on beats to create one cohesive song you can groove to but isn’t something you’d hear on Top 100. I’ve heard the name Space Jesus before, but I don’t think I could list another song by name. Just looking at his bandcamp now, it looks like his stuff is free so I’m definitely going on downloading spree down his rabbit hole next. Anyways, I love this song and feel like not a lot of people have heard so GIVE IT A LISTEN! It’s not on Youtube so to access, click the link & choose “Don’ Bite Me.” WOOHOO!
