Listening to Enroute 1 on the road has been a great experience—the use of abstract electronic flutter, strange blips and bleeps, and punching bass, beats, and blistering rhythms is astounding.
Reflections on the road
Derek Michael’s Enroute 1 is close to home for me; reason is, I too am a transplant from Windsor, Ontario (Canada), the border city of Detroit, and have also lived (near) LA for just over 20 years—”it’s my home, my life,” as Derek Michael succinctly puts it. Michael also notes that “the one thing people complain most about LA is the traffic. Like most of you, as you get older, responsibilities grow. Managing people, resources and expectations, it’s a lot at times. But one thing I look forward to is my commute; it’s where I can make phone calls with friends and family, listen to new music, or catch up on the news. I have learned to value my time in traffic.” This statement resonates with me personally, and it’s exactly what I deal with daily and why Enroute 1 strikes a chord.
Michael administers top-notch production techniques through nine tracks, all related to reflections on the road. As such, listening to the album on the road has been a great experience. The use of abstract electronic flutter, strange blips and bleeps, and punching bass, beats, and blistering rhythms is astounding. “Turning Signal” kicks it off in sweet harmony, the twitching drums, synthesized soundscapes, and even found sounds, all seem to coalesce as “Splitting Lanes” shifts into darker terrain—it’s glitch’n bytes bounce around crunchy low-end pulses. “Off Ramp” fine-tunes Michael’s adeptness for dub-infused video game rhythms and sublime pixelated melodies, a definite slow-groove highlight. The bleep techno / clicks’n cuts dynamic of “Expect Delays,” a sign we almost always see on Southern California freeways, balances tinier melodic fragments with pulsing high-tech-low-tech minimalism as “Cruise Control,” a setting we rarely ever get to use in SoCal, chills everything out with its expansive sputtering techno.
Enroute 1 delicately balances a host of experimental electronic sub-genres, and tracks like “The Finger,” once again, exhibit the upbeat nature of taking in our environment—heavy thudding bass and beats shuffle and flicker with video game undertones. Ultimately an album that’s light and bubbly, yet also maintains its percussive treasure trove of glitchy moods to start the proceedings, and closes with thudding technoid layers, reminding us all to simply enjoy the drive and let it all in.
Enroute 1 is available on Detroit Underground. [Bandcamp]
