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Music

West Wind create electronic dance music with a tastefully live sound

Ulladulla groove masters West Wind have returned with a single more crisp than the east-coast air. Their characteristic blend of live instrumentation and electronica has once again resulted in nothing but pure ambient-groove brilliance in the form of their new single, River.

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West Wind share a sensitivity for producing irresistibly funky dance tunes adorned with instrumentation that is commendable as a standalone feature.

West Wind are by no means your average cruisey four-piece from a sunkissed coastal town. In fact, there’s nothing average about them at all. Enough repetitions of River will make it clear to most that this indie-electronica outfit is on a mission to change the way we imagine the role that traditional instrumentation plays in contemporary electronic dance music. Not an easy task I might add, yet West Wind are going for it and succeeding brilliantly.

River is one of those tracks that instantly instills the sensation provoked by a pleasant surprise. You enter the dreamy, spacious foreground of the song thinking it’s bound to be a funky little guitar track with the perfectly adjusted flutter of a reverbed telecaster by the sounds of it. To be fair, it is a funky guitar track but with so much more depth, thanks to the warm and driving thump of an electronic bass-drum beat.

Suspended synth chords are the most valuable player in filling in the spaces between appropriately minimal instrumentation, adding spacey electronic textures that brilliantly construct an atmosphere in which to move around in listening bliss.

West Wind’s sound is welcomingly reminiscent of Rüfüs Du Sol’s adventures into live electronica, especially when the lead vocals glide in and whisk you away to a groovy, ambient utopia. Yet, West Wind possesses the unique ability to capture a setting or an emotion, (in this case the laidback lifestyle of coastal town living) in a way that electronic music often falls short of for its lack of organic acoustic textures.

River is the first single off West Wind’s forthcoming EP Sundown which is set to drop on January 24th. Stream River below: