Seattle producer Shelf Nunny aka Christian Gunning first came to our attention way back in 2013 — namely it was via 'About The Boy', a collaborative track between him and Berlin-based artist Eriko Toyoda. It was a vibe.
A decade and several releases later (via labels such as Chicago-based Palettes and Seattle's own Hush Hush Records), not to mention remixes from the likes of Kidkanevil (“who heavily inspired + shaped my sound,” Gunning says), his style of experimental beat-making remains addictively luscious.
With more than just a nod to ambient music and field recordings, his latest track 'Cascade Glide' begins trickles with natural-meets-synthetic minutiae from the outset. Synth bleeps and bloops ping and warp in the neardistance, clockwork ticks and mechanical clacks keeping time, fuzzy steps crunching on ground begin proceedings. It's like field recording if you were capturing sounds somewhere like Green Hill Zone, for example. Sonic has long sprinted through, leaving only the swaying grass and empty loops.
It morphs from this quiet, thoughtful beatscape, flying through cotton wool skies into something less pinpoint-detail, more dynamic loud-and-quiet festivities with stuttering chords and bold sections of dead air. It's a track that's equal parts chilled and exhilarating, study beats reimagined — a daydream worked into being by a novel approach to beat-led incidental music of the modern age.
- 🔔 'Cascade Glide' is taken from Pronoia, Shelf Nunny's upcoming “concept album about the opposite of paranoia”, scheduled for release on 26th January; grab it on Bandcamp.
