It’s always a total pleasure to listen to DJ Moonstone’s music – see the link, press play, and turn the volume up. Never a disappointment, far from it. As the weekend begins to kick in, “Fresh New Roller Blades” is a beautifully atmospheric and intense listening experience that will leave you feeling incredible.
Beginning with the simple, organic strum and the gentle rhythm of an electronic soundscape, the track emerges in a way that feels all at once calm and manic, floating around your personal stillness yet carrying you along at high speeds. The connection between the sound and the concept is incredibly powerful – the journey, the beauty of those riffs and melodies – it all seems right at home alongside the electronic rhythm and ambiance driving the track’s pace. It’s a clever composition that feeds off of the title and the creative imagination of the producer in a hugely effective way, making for an enjoyable, uplifting few minutes of listening.
The journey throughout this release, the extended mix in particular, showcases a phenomenal level of detail and sound exploration. The core of the sound is always present, the rhythm, the pace, the synthesized wave of notes. Alongside this though, the release presents a structure that throws in more than a few snippets of an alternate reality, occasionally making for something that feels much more like a multi-sensory experience than simply audio. There’s a touch of spoken word, a few moments of industrial breakdown alongside the smoothness, and there are definite instances of grit and emotion that provoke intense thought.
The intensity of the music is as striking as ever. DJ Moonstone takes the most alternative synths and sounds available and seems to express certain emotional depths by means of specific production techniques, even so much so as which type of distortion to use and when exactly to use it. Throughout the three and twenty-one minutes that “Fresh New Roller Blades” is playing, there are distorted walls of sound followed by gentle and dreamlike puddles of minimalism, all of which add to the emotional realness and the journey, and all of which showcase the true scope of his ability as an artist and a producer.
Listen to it in private, as is often the instruction with producers of such creative precision. You get the full effect by paying attention to the detail, though simultaneously surrendering entirely to the overall ambiance. The opening few bars of music have a softness that is tinged with reflective thought and hope. Then as the first-minute mark passes by, the beat falls away, the pace rises higher, and with it – the energy, that intensity.
