Latest Fad :: Radio Free Money (Durable Oxide)

Durable Oxide announces itself with DOX-001—the debut release from a new Portland, Oregon-based label intent on delivering decisive electronic atmospheres. It’s a strong opening statement for a label to make, and Radio Free Money earns it.

Textured electronic music with an edge of menace

 

Durable Oxide announces itself with DOX-001—the debut release from a new Portland, Oregon-based label intent on delivering decisive electronic atmospheres. It’s a strong opening statement for a label to make, and Radio Free Money earns it. For a first release, the RIYL speaks volumes: Demdike Stare, Stars of the Lid, The Heartwood Institute, Castles In Space. That’s a specific compass pointing toward slow-burn, cinematic, deeply textured electronic music with an edge of menace, and Latest Fad delivers exactly that.

Latest Fad is a duo—Paul Uusitalo and Dan Wilk, members based in Portland, OR and Seattle, WA, who have been collaborating on professional video software together for decades before turning their full attention to music in earnest in 2019. Their previous two albums came out on their own imprint Fading Systems. Radio Free Money is the​ir third full-length and their first on an outside label, employing banks of antiquated synthesizers, modern workstations, analog effects devices, and stringed instruments woven into an electroacoustic pastiche of submerged melodies, hidden rhythms, drops that never arrive, and hopeful/mournful atmospherics. The description “both claustrophobic and infinitely expansive” is apt—this is music that feels like it’s pressing in and opening outward at the same time.

Simple ambience, but it works ::

At first, Latest Fad is genuinely mysterious—you don’t know what to expect when you press play. This leans toward the ambient experimental side of things but has melodic aspects woven through. “Business Hugs II” arrives as the second track and introduces a static stutter effect that’s immediately intriguing, it opens a conversation the rest of the album keeps having with itself. This plays more as a collective than a conventional album, tracks functioning as interconnected environments rather than separate songs. “Overgrowth Mindset” is one of the most melodic pieces on the release—keys, off-rhythmic tones, and a bassline that brings some light into what is otherwise a consistently dark listening experience. Simple ambience, but it works as contrast against the heavier material surrounding it.

“Aberrant Tool & Die” is another interesting piece—its only rhythm is a stable boom with a building single-note cymbal hit, that stale one-note repetition becoming hypnotic as other sounds and effects surface in the background before the track ends in a very dark place. Restraint is the operative word here. The track knows what not to do, and that’s half the work. “Live Laugh Loop” is the favorite of the release—a sad, dark melody with a flanged note sweeping in that makes the intro deliberately hard to parse. The distortion on the pads creates a density that almost obscures the other elements underneath, but those elements are there and they emerge gradually. Nothing here follows a conventional melodic pattern. The only thing obeying musical note rules is the distorted pads themselves—everything surrounding it is off-tone, and that off-tone quality is exactly what gives the track its dark, closing character. As a final statement it lands well.

For a label’s debut release, Durable Oxide has set a clear and credible tone. Labels like Castles In Space and The Heartwood Institute built their identities one carefully chosen release at a time, letting the catalog define the aesthetic rather than announcing it upfront. DOX-001 suggests Durable Oxide understands that logic. Radio Free Money is a strong opening argument for what the label intends to be.

Radio Free Money is available on Durable Oxide. [Bandcamp]