New Artist Highlight: Gem FM and his ‘Sonic Growth’ of Classic Instrumentals
Digital/instrumental artist James Freeman is perhaps pretty new to releasing, however he’s already put out a formidable variety of releases since he creatied the “flexicble musical entity” that’s Gem FM. Since 2021, he’s launched 4 full albums and a smattering of singles beneath the moniker. With a foundation in blues guitar and a Ratatat-like composition type of merging analog and digital sounds, his new Sonic Growth album exhibits him stepping up the electonic side of his type, with some fascinating outcomes.
Whereas producing the brand new album, my studio monitoring scenario obtained a big technical improve. This helped tremendously in fine-tuning my engineering and mastering efforts. I feel Sonic Growth represents my finest work up to now with regard to my mixing and engineering. Having mentioned that, I acknowledge that there’ll at all times be room for enchancment.
This updgare not solely exhibits within the imrpoved digital prpduction high quality of the work on Sonic Growth however within the creativity of songwriting and incorporating extra dance parts than Gem FM’s earlier works. This album goes far past a beat paired with a guitar, and Freeman says what was initially meant to be an EP changed into a full idea album, impressed by classic 808 type and EDM.
With observe names like “SwagR,” “4banger” and “Slide on Down,” Freeman’s actually obtained the EDM lingo down. Listeners anticipating some type of punishing dubstep beat should increase their concepts of a “banger” fairly rapidly, as we’re nonetheless very a lot in fusion territory. The digital composition on many of the tracks, whereas a lot mroe prevalent than in earlier iterations of Gem FM’s sound, remains to be there largely to function the instrumentals.
On “4banger,” for instance, an 80s type synthpop beat and new wave haromines serve to be the gounding drive for a floating panflute line which flitters concerning the employees, additionally accentuated by digital manipulation. “Serrated,” in the meantime, has a type of tropical beat with a digital synth of a sitar, performed like a classical Beethoven piano and album nearer “Slide on Down” has a type of Zappa-like chaos which captures an excellent sense of musical play. Speak about fusion.
Sonic Growth is the primary album whicn doesn’t function Freeman’s signature blues guitar in any significant manner, and this exhibits the artist pushing out of his consolation zone. With this album, it’s clear Freemand as Gem FM is able to experiment much more with sounds, and contemplating how various his work already is, “versatile music entity” is certainly the fitting descriptor for this venture.
Sonic Growth is out not and will be streamed together with the remainder of Gem FM’s discography on Spotify and Soundcloud.