Without making a big thing of it, Bristol born producer Lyndon Rivers has resisted the modern mania for disclosure, instead cultivating an affable inscrutability and consuming devotion to his releases. He’s been many things to many people: a rarified EDM producer, a smarter pop producer with a penchant for retro sounds. Only slowly did it dawn on me that he has always just been Lyndon Rivers – so cunning has been his capacity to absorb sounds and styles into his unvarying poise, his faint detachment and interior artifice, his seemingly boundless faculty to reflect the richness of life in sound. Rivers is one of those producers that always flies under the radar. His been around for some time now and is more than ready to make his mark in music.
The English producer, now residing in Western Australia, drenches his songs in references both retro and modern, by now the style strikes us with bar upon bar of billowy synthesizers sparkling like glossy fabric, stitched into comely silhouettes by ticking percussion and embroidered with dreamy electronic heraldry.
Lyndon’s latest song, “We’re Done Here” is coordinated in its own style, with hook after stylish hook trotted out on the runway. The expressive enigma of the vocals, always so coolly at odds with the excitation surrounding it, is treated in a more overtly pop way than on prior records.
The vocal line of “We’re Done Here” is an ingeniously springy meet-cute of melody and phrasing, which would fit easily on contemporary pop playlists. Lyndon has always been able to craft pristine tunes with nary a hair out of place, but this track feels both more meticulous and airier. The bass lines are tethered to the infectious, punchy percussion, and synths which dominate the soundscape.
Rivers’ influences here feel more diverse than ever before, but his dynamic is so well established that the track never feels bloated or overstuffed. The track feels like a daydream ending prematurely. It’s escapism, in part because Lyndon is so good at crafting incandescent, colorful tunes.
Lyndon Rivers’ projects are built on values that last, like craft, musicianship, meticulousness, and ambition. Instead of wanton exploration, Lyndon has always ground it out in the studio, growing his arrangements and singles into living, breathing things.
Instead of building a persona, his pared away presence from everything but the music, leaving it as a blank, booming amplifier for our projections. After all, the point of Lyndon Rivers isn’t just that he keeps coming back with new releases, but that he returns always as his essential self, with blazing new ideas, bringing transformation after transformation to the table.
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