Elliot Adamson - TiHKAL

March 14, 2019 - [IDEA]

Premier Taste Maker and Quality Content Creator Elliot Adamson has released an album on his very own IDEA imprint. Things I Have Known and Loved comes to us atop a wave that Adamson has been slowly building up over the past years, a wave of style and substance, a wave of his very own. The 8+1 track project is a self-stylized “ode to better places, better times, and the best friends, living in the now, looking forward to the futures and reminiscing on the past.” It’s a comprehensive collection of music and showcase’s Adamson’s approach to creating; he’s an artist whose production habits are given room to shine such that you feel like apart of the decision making process. 

This intimate approach has been described by some as “ambiguous,” “risky,” and “abstract,” which I guess I can agree with on some level, but his production style is more about being unfussy and direct. You can start to feel when Adamson found something he liked while working on a piece and decided it was finished; there might be roughness around the edges getting to the moment, but when the moment hits he knows it and then you know it and the world is right. It’s refreshing, and the points where everything clicks are plentiful. 

The maximalist pieces here are all catered to the dance floor, a space that Adamson knows well. Jungle canopies of lush synths fill the space and allow for the heavy samples and jagged percussive features to hide when they want and make themselves known at the opportune moment. It’s like walking through a huge old society house where every room is blasting some sort of different musical noise but it’s not overwhelming; it defies expectation and comes together tightly. This is friendship music. This is dancing like no-one’s watching music. This is feeling alone but content on a crowded train music. This is the music that gets the most ID requests every time you play it out music. This is Elliot Adamason music.🍍