Gorgon City’s Heart-Racing “Reverie” Album Revives the Lost Art of Presence
Written by rhythm86 on July 18, 2024
The title of Gorgon City‘s new album is just one word, but it says everything we need to know.
It’s called Reverie, the term we use to describe our state when we’re pleasantly lost in our own thoughts. But when it comes to raves—where achieving that headspace should be second nature—we’re living in a time when the compulsion to share our moments with the world prevents us from fully inhabiting them ourselves.
Presence has become a lost art in the era of likes and shares and all the other hollow social media interactions that flush our serotonin instead of the music. In Reverie, where presence is measured in sweat instead of digital validation, Gorgon City mutate their sound and dare listeners to plug into club-driven beats rawer than ever.
Their transformation is both jarring and exhilarating. Reverie finds Gorgon City trading velvet gloves for brass knuckles, dumping their familiar, melancholic anthems in favor of hedonistic club bangers designed for reckless abandon.
It all hits within an instant thanks to the album’s opener, “Are You Feeling It Too?,” which flickers like a match struck in a dark room, illuminating hidden corners of the duo’s sound with tinctures of techno brilliance. They plunge further into the underground in “Make It Happen,” an acid-fueled collaboration with iconic Chicago dance music producer DJ Pierre; and “You Know It,” a down-and-dirty house track.
Ride-or-die fans of Gorgon City will find solace in the sublime “Landslide,” an undeniable highlight wherein Poppy Baskcomb’s haunting vocals mirror the unstoppable force of a crumbling psyche. Her lyricism, a postcard from emotional free-fall, fascinatingly confronts the very concept of reveries and leaves us wondering whether or not we can ever achieve it at all.
The duo then extend an outstretched hand with “Keep Your Head Up,” an uplifting cut where long, tense builds blur the line between ecstasy and exhaustion. Together with house music vet Harry Romero, they produce a track that hits like a midnight drive through a lightning storm—urgent yet hypnotic.
“We wanted to come back with a club-focused album and once we got asked to headline the Yuma tent at Coachella it was a perfect catalyst to get it done for that show and environment,” Gorgon City explained in a press release. “It came together quite quickly, and we loved the reactions we got to the tracks in our DJ sets.”
Reverie is out now via REALM/Astralwerks. Listen to the new album below and find it on streaming platforms here.
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