Tropical Hi-Fi - Oceania (2017)

Emotional Response delivers a mini-album of ambient-equatorial enlightenment by Australia's mysterious Tropical Hi-Fi. The final record from an artist appearing on the label's SchleiBen series, this also points to the future. Based somewhere in the far flung Northern Territories, the music of Hi-Fi's pre-incarnation Electric Egypt was first discovered via the note-worthy airwaves of L.A's outstanding Dublab radio station. As the wonderfully diverse internet shows and project's dense, hip-hop inspired collages came to fruition with 2012's Exotica release, a dual awareness and sporadic contact was maintained whenever a signal could be established with Hi-Fi base camp. As the SchleiBen series was formed, the studio-DJ-cut-up-mix of Oceanic Mythology was warmly received as an inspired counterpoint to the dense offering from Don't DJ. These first real solo recordings from the Hi-Fi crew - whoever he/she/they maybe - moves on from the cut'n'paste of Electric Egypt to seek a meditative vision. Ambient, balearic and field recordings are all part of a drifting tropical flavour that encompasses the listener. Music truly inspired by it's surroundings, this is not some music journal, flying in to sample a life and it's sounds, but the real, living entity and it can be heard deep across the 8 short pieces. None is more typified than Tahiti Blue, where fellow traveller Mike Cooper layers his ubiquitous steel blues over simple, lilting drums.