MGMT - As You Move Through The World

March 20, 2020 - MGMT Records

MGMT launches another zoom-in from-outer-space-track with ‘As You Move Through the World,’ their March 2020 single release. Dulcet pads illicit embryonic development or a deep meditativeness, both of which suggest the empty space at the very center of your being—the vacuous tabula rasa. But then there’s drums and suddenly a spacey-heroin-chic emerges.  

A female voice glitches through the stratum. She’s saying something. I don’t know what it is, but it has the patient cadence of a meaningful idea. For those not familiar with their DJ sets or B-sides, ‘As You Move Through the World,’ may come as a surprising departure from the psychedelic-indie-electro-pop-tronica that put them on the map of coastal elites and shoegazers alike.  

Experimental and next to no danceability, MGMT leans on the pads to keep this single upright and ambulatory. ‘AYMTTW’ switches tempo, introduces low strums of stand-up bass guitar that calls forth world-beat with its arrhythmia. When the track breaks into percussion,  it alternates between strung-out rock drums and low-velocity drum-and-bass beats.  

A high-distortion voice that reminds one of what people believe at their core demons sound like and whips into the aforementioned drum-and-bass at layman’s speed. The pads, the glitching, the speaker distortion, all right there with you the whole time.  

‘As You Move Through the World,’ means the one thing it says clearly. The sounds of space, of ambient life accompany the listener through stages and paces of life. Always the glossy and vacuous core of what connects you to the rest of the world looms. And somehow in all their psychedelia and earnestness, MGMT ends ‘AYMTTW’ with a fade out that does not insinuate death. ⛰️